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Massive Coffee Spillage

H

halfskye

Lurker
Hey all, in the continuation of an already bad day ( :) gotta try to keep smiling ), I just spilled a whole bunch of coffee all over my desk and Nexus One. I quickly took the battery, SD card, and SIM card out of the device, but it looks to have really gotten deep inside of the phone.

Being a naive user and not considering electric shorts or anything like that, I tried to turn the phone back on after mopping it up with a bunch of paper towels. It was getting into the Boot Menu (with the three skating Droids at the bottom) with options to clear user data, fastboot, etc., but wouldn't progress beyond this menu at all when I tried to reboot. Sadly, on subsequent power cycling it seems to now be frozen in this boot menu. The volume controls and power button don't seem to be working anymore so I can't cycle through the menu options at all or select anything. It's just totally frozen.

Another bad thing I'm noticing periodically is that the screen seems to render random scan lines in different shades, making me think there's something grossly wrong with the electronics now too.

I should say that the phone is totally stock (no root or mods at all). I do have insurance but I'm concerned now that I might not have all of my documents together in order to make a claim. Does anybody know how difficult it is to make an insurance claim? I imagine spilling coffee all over the phone might not be covered though :/

Based on the suggestion from a friend, the phone is now sitting in a bag of rice, to try to sop up the liquid inside.

Sorry for the newbie situation and question, but has anybody else run into troubles with being frozen on the boot menu or does anybody have some advice on next steps to take? I'd be supremely grateful for any help. Thank you very kindly in advance!
 
Welcome to Android Forums!

You had the right idea, just patient enough. Trying to turn on your phone while still wet, was probably a bad move. make sure the battery, sd card and sim are out of the phone while your phone is sitting in the rice. And leave it there for at least 48 hours (72 might be better).

I would guess, unless you have a comprehensive "anything goes" insurance plan liquid damage won't be covered.
 
Thank you for the help. I'm going to go ahead and plan to let the phone sit in its rice bed for the next 72 hours and I'll make sure to come back and post a status update. Thank you again!
 
Fortunately no. It was just black coffee.

An incredibly kind co-worker is lending me his spare Motorola Cliq for the time being.

I know this is a silly question but I am mildly serious about the answer - does the size of the bag of rice matter? It's sitting in a little 14 oz. bag at the moment, which is just enough to pack about a half-inch to inch of rice around the phone on all sides. Motion in the ocean, etc. :)
 
halfskye said:
Fortunately no. It was just black coffee.

An incredibly kind co-worker is lending me his spare Motorola Cliq for the time being.

I know this is a silly question but I am mildly serious about the answer - does the size of the bag of rice matter? It's sitting in a little 14 oz. bag at the moment, which is just enough to pack about a half-inch to inch of rice around the phone on all sides. Motion in the ocean, etc. :)
Click to expand...

It's not the size, it's what you do with it. (sorry, too easy ;) )

If the bag is sealed, it should be OK. All you want to do is create an environment that is very dry so by establishing a hygroscopic equilibrium, most of the moisture is drawn out of the phone.
 
Quick/happy update! I pulled the phone out of its rice bed yesterday and to my supreme shock and amusement, the Nexus One is working perfectly as if it had completely forgotten that I ever attempted to drown it in coffee. Just had to dislodge some pesky rice grains out of the headphone jack ;) I'm convince that rice is magic and I may just start putting all of my problems into bags of rice from now on.

Thank you very much for help, lunatic! :)
 
Excellent news. You should make an offering of the rice to gods winged creatures, which gave up it's freshness so that your phone can live. Just don't leave your freshly washed car in the vicinity should you do that ;)
 
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