I had to go to England the day after I got my new Treo smartphone, and I got caught in a heavy downpour. A REALLY heavy downpour. Fortunately… or maybe not, I was wearing good waterproof raingear.
On getting back to the hotel, I found that my wonderfully waterproof pocket had filled up with water and that my Treo was also full of water, and looking really dead. Fortunately I had once rescued a laptop from a drenching, so here is the method I use. Try this before panicking:
- Do not try to switch the device on
- Unplug it, take out the battery, drain and wipe as much of the water as you can… do not try to open the device though, in case of later warranty claims.
- Leave it all to dry out, take your time. Now this can take several days, unassisted, so I place a towel on a radiator and the device on that (of course, this doesn’t work in summer).
- Leave it for at least 12 hours… Overnight or something. The next day, plug it in without the battery (some devices won’t work off the mains), you may find that it all restarts nicely.
- Next, switch it off, put in the battery and leave it to charge for several hours.
If you are lucky, your machine will be back online, looking and feeling none the worse for wear.
For a week afterwards, there was a damp patch on the screen of my Treo, each day getting smaller, but it did not affect operations, and now, it’s fine. No trace of the problem.
Phew! I hope it works for you too.
