Technology and You

Ever have one of those "Oh FAQ!!!" moments with your electronic device? Any electronic device, including our bike stuff.

I'll start: I just pulled a 16 gigabyte flash drive from the clothes dryer. Yep, it went through the wash cycle too. Had some important work stuff on it.

It still works. Whew!

 

Oh... I have boys, and too many of these stories to list! My favorite, however, is the day I went to the dryer, opened the door, and pulled out a pair of pants. I knew immediately that the bulge was my son's iPhone 5s. It went through a full wash and dry cycle with no case. I threw it in a bag of rice, and let it sit for three days. After that, it powered up and ran normally!

 

And so goes the invention/discovery of smart rice.

 

I wish I had that luck...my iPhone 5 fell into a salt water pool and never worked again. I tried rice and compressed air, a hair dryer, the fan....nothing. I ended up with an iPhone 6S which I absolutely hate!

Did I mention the phone was in my pocket as it fell in the pool? hahaha. Not fun!

 

Apple already patent it and called it IRice. I'vc repaired a few iphones in my life and I can tell you, the ones that don't work are the ones that fall in salt water and beer.

 

I work in and around water. I have dropped a cell phone into the water a few times over the years. I always removed it right away each time and it always continued to work afterward.

 

My wife's Iphone fell in water. Luckily battery was drained at the time. She riced it, it dried out powered up for a few seconds ( dead-ish battery stopped it).

Then we couldn't get the charger to plug into the phone.

Turns out a grain of rice was stuck way up in the charge port. Couldn't get it out.

 

I went for a ride in Ojai with Scott last year. At the end of the ride I put my gloves and Garmin 500 on the roof of his car. By the time I remembered we were already on the 101 fwy headed back to the San Fernando valley.
Garmin and gloves gone but on the positive side, I didn't have to spend any money on rice!

 

Counterintuitive, but if you get the beer or salt water problem just swirl it around in distilled water.

The actual damage is caused by short circuits due to the minerals precipitating out on the electronics, thereby conducting the electrons where they're not supposed to go. Distilled water has no minerals; pure distilled water does not conduct electricity.

Removing the contaminant minerals removes the problem.

 

Very interesting!