Help Phone got into some overheating due to condensation

[daffyducknj]

I'm posting this for my dad. His Slider got into some overheating and condensation issues. Apparently he had it too long inside his thin jacket, in a shirt pocket located above his left side. He was trying to use it while on the bus, and there was a message saying that the phone had overheated. A couple of passengers tried to help him out, and they determined that he had to turn it off for a while.

Once home, we plugged the charger on it to try to charge the battery. Meanwhile, I tried rebooting it a few times, including getting into recovery. The phone seems glitchy, so there's really not much use for it at the moment. Also, when it boots to Android, it has the Safe Mode indicator lit up at the bottom left of the screen.

At the moment, I've taken out the battery and the cover. I also have the keyboard pulled out (but not disassembled) in an attempt to dry out the phone. Any idea as to how long this usually takes? If the worst case comes about, I could rework my Kyocera Event, unroot that phone, and let him use it on his VM account.

I also told him this is why I rarely store my phone inside a jacket. About the only time I do this is during the winter, especially with the weather we had in the Northeast US (thanks polar vortex). I usually store mine in the pants pocket. None of my phones have overheated because of that, unless some rogue app suddenly eats memory and/or CPU cycles. Still, nothing as worse as my dad just experienced.

 

[Rukbat]

an attempt to dry out the phone. Any idea as to how long this usually takes?

If you soak it in a few alcohol baths, one after the other (about 2 minutes each, swishing it to get alcohol into every crevice) anout 10 minutes. If you just let it sit, or put it into uncooked rice ... well, the sun will engulf the planet in about 8 billion years, but the phone will have corroded so much in about 2 weeks that about all it will be good for is adding to the fire in a few billion years.

Read Wet Phone That's what you have, a wet phone. Whether from condensation, sweat dripping on it or dropping it into a lake or toilet, the procedure is the same. (Wear 2 pairs of medical gloves, then a pair of diswashing gloves over that, if it's dropped into a toilet. A small scratch on your hand exposed to some of those bacteria will turn into enough blood poisoning in about 3 days to require amputation at the elbow or shoulder. And the problem is that by the time someone notices the red line [it doesn't really hurt] you're in very serious condition.)

I also told him this is why I rarely store my phone inside a jacket.

I do very often.

About the only time I do this is during the winter, especially with the weather we had in the Northeast US (thanks polar vortex).

That weather is one of the reasons I used to live in the in that part of the country.

I usually store mine in the pants pocket.

Pants pockets bend, phones don't. The only phones I've ever put in my pockets are small flip phones. Bend over carelessly with a 4" or larger Android phone in your front pocket (or sit on one in your back pocket) and you have an expensive paperweight.

The thing is to never put a cold phone into a warm place. That almost immediately causes condensation. (Think of a glass of iced drink on the table on a really hot muggy day. Small lake on the table after a few minutes.) If the temperature difference is enough - like having the phone in an outside pocket for a few hours while you shovel 36 inches of "80% chance of sunshine" off the driveway (a thrill southerners have never had - we had a "blizzard" this past winter - there was actually snow on the fence rail), then walk into a 75 degree, humidified house - the phone is about as wet as if you dropped it into a bowl of water.

 

[daffyducknj]

Guess we got lucky here. The phone sat around for a full day, with all of the easily removable contents in pieces.

Phone booted up, and battery read at 80%. Figured that was correct, as he is a light user of his phone. QWERTY keyboard works, too. (I'm not good at using that anymore...) Touchscreen does seem a bit less responsive, but it's working. No more booting into Safe Mode automatically. Stock recovery is accessible. SD card is OK.

I still have my Kyocera Event ready to go, unrooted, just in case. I previously had that rooted, so at least it's free of most of the bloatware, but it works well without them. If we have to change phones, at least I won't have to install a lot of stuff. Mostly facebook, NYTimes, minutes checker... about ten apps, but anyway. We'll see how this turns out in the next few days.

 

[Rukbat]

Keep that Kyocera ready to go. Unless the condensation was almost chemically pure water (IOW, in a VERY clean environment so the moisture in the air didn't contain any contaminants), there will be 2 slow ongoing processes - corrosion and carbonization. And the phone will eventually fail. "Eventually" could be in 10 years, it could be in 10 weeks, there's no way to tell. But since you have a potential solution, just keep the battery in the Kyocera charged every 3-6 months (keep it at about 75% charge - and not in the phone - for long-term storage.)

 

[daffyducknj]

Thanks for the help, Rukbat. I appreciate the advice!