Saving A Wet Cell Phone Or Tablet

by Christian C

I've got bad news for you. Dropping your phone in a puddle of water, bath, sink, toilet - even getting caught in a heavy shower - will leave it irreparably damaged. The same goes for tablet computers.

No more apps, games, Facebook, phonecalls or browsing. All gone.

That is, if you leave it switched on. Switching it off right away is probably the best solution, but it's not all bad news.

In fact, there are a number of ways in which you can stop your phone or tablet computer from being left as nothing more than an expensive brick following prolonged contact with water.

The Effect of Water Damage

It is important to act fast when your phone or tablet gets wet. Water and electricity simply don't get along, so a wet device could short out and even give you an electric shock. At best, a bit of water will condense on a hot circuit board or processor and cause damage to the screen, while water can find its way into bezels, slots, under the screen and into the battery cavity.

Basically, letting your phone or tablet (or laptop) get wet is a bad idea, and requires you to act as quickly as possible.

First Things First - Turn It Off!

If your phone has been exposed to enough water to make you concerned, the first thing you should do is turn it off! Not all phones will allow you to remove the battery, but if this option is available to you, do this rather than turning the device off.

Whatever you do, don't waste time checking if it still works or not - this will make things worse!

You might be out and about when the phone gets wet, or you might be at home or in the office. Either way, you will need to find a flat, dry surface that you can use for the following steps. Fast action is hugely recommended - failure to complete this and the following steps quickly will result in a permanently damaged phone or tablet!

Disassemble What You Can

Fortunately phones and tablets don't come apart too easily. If they did, they'd probably fragment each time they were dropped!

However along with the battery, there are at most two other items that should be removed. The first is the SIM card, which you should retrieve, dry and keep somewhere safe. Following this, if your device has a removable SD or micro SD card, this should also be removed and dried.

The reason for this step is simple - water gets everywhere! By removing these two cards, you can dry the slots where they are housed with some tissue paper, soaking up as much water as possible.

Drying the Phone or Tablet

Don't stop with the SIM and SD card slots, however - any water you can find on your switched-off device should be blotted up as quickly as possible.

What follows is a list of suggestions for alternative methods of moisture removal from your hardware, but in the meantime, before reaching that stage, ensure all water droplets around the edge of the display, on the display itself, around any screw holes and bezels (in fact, everywhere on the exterior of your phone or tablet) is soaked up with tissue paper or kitchen towel.

Without taking the device apart (something that in itself is dangerous and with the added moisture drops trickling around becomes smartphone-suicide) this is as dry as you will be able to physically get it.

But what about the insides? Fortunately, there are a couple of tricks you can use...

Drying the Inner Workings

Inside a smartphone or tablet computer you will find processors, circuit boards, button rockets - all places where water can find a home and cause damage. With your waterlogged device quickly switched off and the SIM and micro SD card removed, however, you are in a strong position to recover the device.

You just need to dry the bare circuit board, wires and processors inside.

There are several ways in which you can achieve this:

Hairdryer: with your hairdryer on a low setting and your phone held far enough away that you won't burn your hand, use the hot air that it projects to dry your phone, spending some time focusing on the battery and SIM/micro SD card slots (in order to push warm, drying air ito the device). Be careful when warming the screen, however, as you don't want to cause damage to the touch-screen interface. Continue this for up to 30 minutes, maintaining an even covering of warm air.

Oven: placing your phone or tablet on a small empty box on an oven tray and setting the oven to its lowest setting is one other way that you might dry the internal components of your device. Your oven's lowest temperature (110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit) shouldn't cause any damage to your device, but you'll need to leave it in overnight (or until "done")

Boiler/Airing Cupboard: another heat-based solution, this will take a few hours to dry your phone - probably about a full day. Make sure your boiler is switched on before using this solution, however.

A Bowl of Rice: while you might have to head to the local convenience store, a bowl of dry, uncooked rice is perhaps the most successful solution to any water damage to your phone or tablet. You'll need to pack it into a container big enough to hold your hardware and a good layer of rice - about 1 inch on all sides - but the foodstuff will soak up almost all of the moisture overnight, leaving you with a fully working device.

Lots of Silica Gel: if you're a serial tech addict, the chances are you've collected a large supply of silica gel sachets for some indeterminate event in the future. Well, I've got news for you - the future is now! Pack your phone or tablet into a box with plenty of silica gel sachets to cover the device on all sides and leave it overnight, and hope that your hoarding wasn't in vain.

Pure Alcohol: one last suggestion that has been proven to work is the use of pure alcohol. If the damage caused to your device by water is the result of basic physics then the submerging of the switched-off device into rubbing alcohol is a result of basic chemistry. The concept is simple: the alcohol will displace the water, and when your device is removed from the liquid the alcohol will evaporate. This is an extreme solution, but useful if the other fixes don't work.

Conclusion

With so many ways of resolving the problem of a waterlogged phone or tablet, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is okay to get your hardware wet.

It isn't.

These potential fixes are precisely that: "potential" fixes, as opposed to "actual" fixes. They've all be used by people in the past, but none is guaranteed to work, not even submerging in rice! As such, there are a few things you should consider:

• Don't use your phone or tablet over a toilet, sink or bath.
• Don't leave your device in the bathroom (steam from a hot shower can condense and cause water damage).
• Treat your hardware with respect, regardless of how much it cost you. A replacement will be costly and time consuming to acquire.

Keeping your phone or tablet in a safe place where it is unlikely to be exposed to any water damage is of course the best option!

Image Credit: Mobile floats on water ripples, Hair dryer, Silica Gel packets via Shutterstock

Source 

Make Your Phone’s Battery Last Longer

How often do you recharge your smartphone?

It’s different for everyone; personally speaking, my phone is charged (on average) every other day, but of course this changes when I’m working “on the road” (conducting interviews or just hanging out in cafes working on my tablet or just with pen and paper).

Working as an IT person, is something that require me to have my phone switched on 24/7. This also meant almost perpetual charging, whether at home or in the office. That’s a lot of recharging; a lot of energy.

In a society where energy costs are rising, and blackouts are more common and the urge to stay connected is ever-greater, knowing how to manage your mobile phone’s battery as effectively as possible is increasingly important.

This isn’t only to keep costs down – it’s also about staying in communication with emails and social networking services as well as text messaging and phone calls.

Why Battery Life Decreases Under Different Conditions

Smartphones almost exclusively employ Lithium-Ion (aka Li-ion) batteries as these offer an affordable, high capacity solution for the various functions, services and connections that smartphone users expect from operating systems.

Battery charge decreases on a day-to-day basis through constant use – but what factors affect the life of a Li-ion battery?

The age of the battery is most important, as this can affect that maximum charge. A 2010 study demonstrated that from a starting capacity of 88-94%, battery life after 250 charges reduced to 73-84%. 

Internal resistance and self-discharge is largely redundant in modern batteries, and while age is something that cannot be easily managed (batteries can sit on shelves in their smartphones for months before purchase) all of this means that managing your battery life is something that you will need to monitor closely.

Looking After Your Battery

A few years ago I was convinced that full battery discharge from time to time was the best way to maintain long life for the power cell – I’ve since learned, however, that this is not the case. Instead, avoiding full discharge and charging regularly is apparently the best way to keep the battery working longer.

However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t fully discharge your battery every couple of months. Doing so enables the device hardware to recalibrate capacity, thereby ensuring that the correct charge is displayed on your smartphone.

Interestingly, temperature will affect your battery life; even occasional use in hot conditions will drain the battery faster…

Native Tips and Tricks for Maintaining Battery Life on Your Mobile Phone

There are various ways provided by mobile phone operating system developers that you can employ to lengthen the time between charges.

Sadly this means a trade-off with functionality.

The most obvious thing to do is make sure your screen is set to switch off after a certain amount of time unused – perhaps after 30 seconds or a minute. You can also disable the phone’s vibrate mode and any vibrate/haptic feedback designed to help you determine when software buttons have been pressed.

After this, it’s time to turn your attention to connectivity. Bluetooth will drain your battery, so if this isn’t in use, disable it. Similarly, Wi-Fi will severely deplete battery life, especially if you have a few rogue apps or games maintaining a connection with a remote server.

Mobile Internet such as EDGE, 3G, 4G and beyond will also lead to faster depletion of battery life. If you’re not using these connections for anything (i.e. your phone is sitting idle) then disable them.

Finally, take a look at the apps you have installed, and determine whether or not they require localization services. These are typically provided by GPS, one of the biggest drains on your phone’s battery. If you’re not using GPS, switch it off!

Battery Management Apps

Pretty much all mobile platforms have battery management apps available for them. These are available either as third party apps that can be installed from the corresponding app store or provided as a native option.

Sadly, these apps don’t really do anything magical. Typically they will restrict data transfer on mobile Internet services, or at best all but disable non telephony connectivity in order to maintain battery life for as long as possible. After all, smartphones are basically for making phone calls, so as long as this fundamental function is available with a low battery, there isn’t an overwhelming need to recharge.

Can I Recharge My Phone in the Freezer?

As crazy as the idea of placing an expensive piece of hardware in a coolbox might sound, it is actually possible to get more battery life from a smartphone by placing it somewhere cold for a while.

While a freezer is unsuitable – it is likely to cause the casing of the battery to crack – the principle of keeping a Lithium-Ion battery cool will increase the amount of power that it delivers to your phone. Li-ion rechargeable batteries generate heat when in use, something that is mitigated by internal resistance (this is also why charger voltages are so low; a high voltage would result in a faster charge but also a higher temperature – above 30 degrees Celsius/86 degrees Fahrenheit – reducing the life of the battery). This causes the battery to discharge more quickly while simultaneously providing energy for the normal functioning of the device.

Using the phone in a cooler environment or storing the battery itself in a cool place when not in use can extend the charge and the life of the cell.

Conclusion

Keeping your smartphone battery charge going for as long as possible isn’t just environmentally sound, it is financially sound too. While recharging from a modern car battery might not cost as much as recharging your smartphone from the mains electricity every day, understanding what services and functions impact battery power the most and taking steps to minimise these is the best way of increasing the life of the current charge.

As for your battery itself, regular top-up charges, with occasional recalibration discharges will increase battery life, as will storage in a cool place away from heat.

How To Access the new Outlook.com and hotmail On Your Android Device

Did you sign up for an Outlook.com email address with Microsoft's new Outlook.com email service, or do you still have a Hotmail account you prefer? If you're an Android user, you have several options for accessing that account on your Android phone or tablet. Microsoft provides an official Hotmail app that works for Outlook.com addresses, too. You can also use Android's included Email app, if you like that instead.

Outlook.com is a worthy contender in the webmail arena. It has come a long way since Google overshadowed it with Gmail's release. While Outlook.com and Hotmail email accounts may feel the most at home on Microsoft's Windows Phone or Windows 8 ecosystems, they work great on Android, too.

Hotmail App

Microsoft offers an official Android app for its email service. You candownload it for free from Google Play. While the app's name is currently "Hotmail," it also works fine with Outlook.com accounts.

After downloading the app, launch it and you'll be prompted to enter your email address and password. You can use an @outlook.com or @live.com email address instead of a Hotmail address.

After configuring a few synchronization settings, you'll see your inbox. The official Hotmail app supports a variety of features:

• Multiple account support: You can configure several Outlook.com or Hotmail addresses and view them all in the same app.
• Contact and calendar event synchronization: If you enable these options while setting up your account, contacts and calendar events from your Outlook.com or Hotmail account will appear in Android's included Contacts and Calendar apps.
• Push email: You'll be notified of new emails as soon as you receive them.

Built-In Email App

Android's included Email app supports Exchange ActiveSync accounts, and each @outlook.com email address also includes full Exchange ActiveSync support. You can use Android's included email app instead of the dedicated Hotmail app, if you prefer. The email app offers all the same features of the Hotmail app above, including calendar event and contact sync, multiple inboxes, and push email.

To set up your new email account, open Android's settings screen and tap Add Account. On older versions of Android, you'll find the Add Account option under Accounts on the Settings screen.

Select the Corporate account type. On older versions of Android, this option may be named Exchange instead of Corporate.

Enter your full email address and password when prompted.

On the Account setup screen, add @outlook.com (or @hotmail.com, if you have a Hotmail email address) to the end of the Domain\Username field.

Change the contents of the Server box to snt-m.hotmail.com

After configuring your synchronization settings, your account is good to go. You can view your email by launching the Email app.

If the corporate account method doesn't work for you, you can also select "Email" instead of "Corporate" while adding an account - Microsoft provides instructions for using POP3 and SMTP instead of Exchange ActiveSync. However, this won't work as well, as POP3 doesn't provide two-way synchronization of read and unread messages.

Unfortunately, Outlook.com does not currently support the standard IMAP protocol. As the Hotmail team said in our question and answer session with them, they're investigating IMAP support, although they feel Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) is a better solution. Click here to read more about the differences between POP and IMAP.

Have you set up an Outlook.com or Hotmail email account on your Android smartphone or tablet? How'd it work for you? Did you run into any snags not mentioned here? Leave a comment and share your experience!

 Source