Ina Fried of CNET faced one of the worst situations for a BlackBerry owner — short of dropping it off a 12-story high rise, that is. She did what 885,000 Britons do every year and dropped her phone in the toilet. It was a BlackBerry Curve, so you can imagine our concern. It’s like witnessing a particularly gruesome sports injury. No, it didn’t happen to me, but the empathetic pain borders on physical. She Googled “what to do if your cell phone gets wet,” which is a shame, because if she Googled what to do if your BlackBerry gets wet she would have found our article on BBGeeks. Unfortunately, Fried didn’t follow much of the advice. So did her BlackBerry survive the dunk in the tank?
While we put in nice, bolded letters, wait 48 hours before re-inserting your battery, Fried got a bit impatient.
Pull out the battery. Check. Make sure everything is as dry as possible. Some suggest paper towels or those silica gel packs to absorb moisture, while others recommend a bowl of uncooked rice.
The next piece of advice is to leave it be for a day or two. Don’t test it. Just let it dry out.
That’s was the hard part. It just goes against human nature–or at least my nature–to just let it sit there.
I must admit, I did test it several times yesterday.
I saw signs of life, but it was clearly not working properly. Sometimes the power light would go on and nothing else. Other times it would show the rotating hourglass, but the screen was not back-lit.
Thankfully, this story did not end in disaster. However, this doesn’t mean that all wet BlackBerry devices will work like Fried’s. There’s just as good a chance that it never works again. She does point out that it is her nature, and is probably the nature of many of us, to keep trying, despite warnings not to.
Here’s the question heading into Memorial Day weekend: Do you think you could hold off on testing your BlackBerry during the drying process? I know with my last consumer phone I tested it before a full 48 hours, and the screen was never the same again. I can’t imagine the same fate for my BlackBerry. So perhaps experience has taught me to live with the lack of a BlackBerry. But what about the readers? Do you have the willpower to leave the Berry alone for two full days?
