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ryan.lheureux

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2008
2
1
First and foremost if you drop your iphone in the toilet fallow these simple steps.

1) If you have not yet dropped your iPhone in the toilet, consider NOT dropping your iPhone in the toilet. This is a solid course of action, in my opinion, and one that can be easily achieved by not keeping your iPhone in your back pocket, unless your back pocket has a button, but if that's the case, you probably aren't cool enough to own an iPhone in the first place, no?

If displacement of object x (where x = a ****ing expensive phone) is forced by the downward velocity of object y (where y = your pants), object x will swan dive out and away from object y, with the trajectory being affected by the natural gravitational pull of object z (where z = the ****ter) by a fairly simple factor of murphy's law < just your flipping luck + manufacturers' warranty = VOID.

In layman's terms: pants down + phone falls = splish splash.

2) If you have already dropped your iPhone in the toilet, you do need to immediately remove it from the toilet, then proceed directly to step 3.

3) Wash your hands.

4) Stare at phone in horror for a few seconds and assess the damage. The screen will probably be reminiscent of scrambled porn.

5) Turn the phone off, if you can. Hit the button on the top of the phone and hold it until you see the fancydancy SLIDE TO POWER OFF option on the screen, which of course you will not see, because of the aforementioned scrambled porn. NOT THAT I KNOW WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE, OR ANYTHING.

5a) Try holding down the home button AND the top-of-phone button at the same time until the phone shuts off.

6) Don't turn it back on. Unless you are Amy. Who turned it back on.

7) Don't stick pens in the side of the phone in a vain attempt to open it up. Unless you are Amy. Who stuck pens in the side of the phone in a vain attempt to open it up.

8) Go online and read about dunking the phone in rubbing alcohol or Everclear. Do not do this because it sounds scary, but consider taking a shot of Everclear. Or 12.

8a) Sink into blissful alcohol poisoning coma, where you will never have to think about the time you dropped your iPhone in the toilet, forever and ever, fluffy clouds and harps.

9) Put the phone down. Walk away. Wring hands, rent garments, gnash teeth.

10) Do not walk back to the phone after 10 minutes and attempt to start it back up. Unless you are...oh, you know where this is going.

12) Stick the phone in a cup of rice. Fret for a few minutes re: basmati or Arborio or possibly some Uncle Ben's Cheddar Rice with Broccoli before settling on the long grain enriched.



13) Remember, perhaps, that you did not ever finish peeing.

14) Confess to husband. Get shrill and hysterical over the idea that you may have to get an non-iPhone phone, because you cannot afford another iPhone, but doesn't he understand? You had an iPhone! You cannot go back now! What are you supposed to use, a ****ing Razr?

14a) Consider prostitution.

15) Call it a day and go to bed. Tell reflection in mirror that it is not worthy of owning an electric toothbrush, much less an iPhone. Tell non-reflected-self to go to hell.

16) Wait at least 24 hours before turning the phone back on. Whoop with joy at the sight of the Apple logo. Holler with ecstasy at the sight of the homescreen. Weep with gratitude when the phone connects to the network with a fat, full signal.

17) Touch the Phone icon to call you husband and tell him that he doesn't need to divorce you after all.

18) Touch it again when nothing happens.

19) Oh.

20) Safari? Mail? iPod? Settings? Anyone? Bueller?

21) Determine that only the top half of the screen is working. Congratulations! Your iPhone is now a $600 texting/calendar/Google Mapping device.

21a) Oh, and YouTube. You can still totally get the sneezing panda video.

22) Turn phone off and flee the room, decide to give it another 24 hours, also wonder what the odds are that the Apple guys at the Genius Bar will believe you that my heavens, I have no idea what happened, or if the iPhone comes with a tracking chip like George's book on Seinfeld, which in that case they will simply hand the phone back to you and say, I'm sorry, but this phone has been in the toilet, and we cannot help you.



(Ahh, this old chestnut. I should really have this photo on a macro by now. Ctrl+Alt+****this****)

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Okay now that you had a good laugh you can really start helping yourself out.

First of all, I was sitting on the toilet at work taking a crap and I was feeling generous and decided to give everybody in the bathroom a nice flush before i finished. So i did and then i grabbed my iphone to cont surfing the web while enjoying my time on the toilet. And wham dropped my $400 piece of equipment into the bowl. I imediatlly reached my hand into the pot and grabbed my presious iphone. i dryed it off with some tissue and ran out of the stall grabbing some more towels. practlly in tears i tryed turning the damn thing off and low and behold my slide to turn off function wasnt working, suprise...i think not. So i did a hard shut off and removed the sim card and began to shake and try and get as much water out of the ports as possible. I finally felt satisfied with the effort put into getting the water out and boom the damn thing started turning on by itself! the screen went to the apple logo and then had bars across the scream before turning pink and shut off. I called apple and they pretty much told me im SOL. I was so pissed and didnt help all my friends were laughing at me for being so stupid. Everybody kept telling me "why dont you take out the battery and dry it that way" (WTF of all advice to give someone it had to be the one thing the damn thing couldnt do) so i placed my phone on a near by computer to get it nice and hot. It was acting up and turing on and off for about 3 hours before it finally died on me. I let it dry until i went home for lunch about 4 hours later. I saw water damage under the phone and when i got home and plugged it in the phone told me to plug into itunes. I did as it said and it didnt even realize the device and finally after about 10 min of plugging in and out it finaly said it has to restore from original settings. did that and then it restored it to previous settings. My iphone was perfectly fine!!!!! So i thought, i soon found out that it was turing the "ringer" icon on and off. times wouldnt even leave the screen. It also didnt let me use the top bottom to put it to sleep. Next thing i know its placing itself into airplane mode and not recognizing the iphone charger saying its an unknown device plugged into it. I decided it was best to turn it off and let it dry some more. I thought the warmest place it could be was in my car with the 90 degree temps outside. i left it in the car for about another 4 hours. when i got off work the phone is perfectly fine! no problems what so ever. no water damage and not doing anymore problems. So word to the wise. DRY your iphone in a very warm place asap and get ALL the water out of it before you try and do anything else. So dont give up. The stupid brick isnt so stupid after all

Ryan
 
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Indeed...

Ryan,

Thank you. It is about 5am here in Indiana. I got up early because I had trouble sleeping and was worried about my incredibly soaked device, my beloved IPhone. Your humor was quite appreciated although I'm a bit giddy at the moment anyway and probably would have laughed if I fell down the stairs.

Got home from work yesterday, had IPhone in pocket, decided to wash clothes and hell why not wash the jeans I was wearing? Cheerfully tossed clothes (gently) into washer and turned it on. About 2 minutes later I was wondering where my IPhone was and my heart chilled and then broke into a panic as I dashed frantically to the washing machine.

Poor thing was leaking from the top and bottom. I almost emulated it. I stared in horror at it (yes, horror!) because I love my IPhone, it is my friend. It was dead, or perhaps sleeping? I managed to rein in my emotions and shook it vigorously, grimacing as droplets of water were ejected.

I got online and Googled "I dropped my iphone into water" and got quite a few articles. Glad I didn't see yours yesterday, Ryan, I probably would have cursed quite a bit at the humor. I wasn't ready for it then.

Removed Sim card (didn't know that came out!) and shook my beloved IPhone some more. Still dead (or sleeping?).

I subjected it to five hours yestereve with a constant stream of hot air propelled from a Vidal Sassoon hair dryer. (I don't use hair dryers. why do I have one of these? Did a former girlfriend leave it or a former wife?)

I plugged it into USB and Apple logo appears and mournfully fades away.

I put about 2 inches of rice into a baking dish and put my oven on the lowest. Damn, it only goes down to 170 degrees. I feared for the integrity (what remained of it) of my IPhone at that temperature. I decided to save the brown rice for another purpose.

I then put it close under a 75 watt bulb for the rest of the night and tried to sleep. I had accepted that "this too shall pass", whatever the hell that meant in this situation.

I woke up about 3am and decided that whatever God there might be had decided I needed one of the new 3G phones that are supposed to come out in early June (just days away!) and that is why I had forgotten the phone was in my pocket. It was a divine decision for me to upgrade.

I sure didn't want to go back to my f***ng Razr.

Perhaps my strained credit card would manage a new 3G phone. I felt more cheerful and went back to sleep.

This morning, I re-insert the Sim into my very toasty warm IPhone, plug it in and the Apple logo (bless the cheerful Apple!) appears, then mournfully fades away! OMFG! Getting a grip on myself, I Google once more for "reset IPHone". Oh, hold down that little button on the top for a few seconds. Didn't know about that. I probably should have RTFM.

*faint* HOME SCREEN! EVERYTHING WORKS! No streaks, no fades, no color changes, no nothing but bliss and love and *pause as he wipes tears away* and a perfectly functioning IPhone.

I promise I'll never ever be thoughtless with my phone again....although, a 3G phone sure sounded attractive in the middle of the night.
 
I almost dropped mine in the lake last night! While fishing, it came unclipped from my belt and hit the side of the boat, and bounced inward toward me instead of outwards. Ahhhh this would have been a disaster!
 
Thanks for the fun post and glad your phone survived!

All the same, I don't think I fancy it should you put it in Marketplace. :D
 
Post was enjoyable and good know everything is in order.

I'll remember to hold tightly to my phone and keep it not above the water.
 
Rice!

rice is a poor mans silica gel,

i did this with my iphone bluetooth headset, which went through the washing machine once, and it did work!!!
 
iPhone + Large Bowl of Dog's Water

I was picking up my cat because my three dogs had him cornered in the bathroom. When I picked up Smokey, said cat, I leaned over and my phone slid nicely out of my sweatshirt pocket and into the abyss of a giant dog's water bowl. Smokey was on the floor again as I lunged for the phone...it was probably fully submerged for 4 seconds.

I tried to turn it off, but it decided to do that itself; and then it would turn on again. I let the phone do its on/off thing while I removed the SIM card and tray.

Positioning the phone vertically on a ventilation grill along the floor, I was able to dry it rather quickly. I turned the heat up in the house and let the phone dry for about 2 days.

It works perfectly now, well almost... Two things:
1. The phone will not turn off, and if the battery dies it trys in vain to restart endlessly (I never turned my phone off anyway).
2. I swear my battery life has decreased by ~ 20%.

At least I now won't have to sell my organs to buy a new iPhone. Good luck to all those whose phones suffer the same fate.
 
ryan ... a couple of hours more in your car and u would have a gigantic fry :D
its not clever to dry somethin in the car...
 
ryan ... a couple of hours more in your car and u would have a gigantic fry :D
its not clever to dry somethin in the car...

Oh dont worry it was under 110 degrees in my car :) couldnt of messed it up any more then it already was. It was that or attempting the "does it blend".
 
I dropped my chocolate (before i got my iphone this was the nicest phone i ever had) in the TOILET because stupid me had it in my back pocket, pull pants down, and PLOP.

It was a public toilet - gross.. But i did it. I got it out and freaked!

well, i basically put a couple layers of paper towels under it and set it on the dash in my car, it was sunny and warm. The end of the work day, my phone was PERFECT!!

then i was painting my newly purchased house. Had the chocolate in my hoodie front pocket (bad place to put ANYTHING of value) and SPLUNK the phone went INTO the entire can of latex paint. I pulled it out and spent an hour wiping it down. finally got to the point where i could SEE where the SIM and mini sd card was and got them out. I let the paint dry and peeling as much away as i could.. it was a black chocolate that fell in red paint, i had a cherry covered chocolate :)

well, the darn thing bounced back AGAIN with the exception of the wheel, but it made the thing MORE usable (if you ever used a chocolate, you know how sensitive that wheel is)

the thing still works, but now i have my iphone and am very happy
 
Iphone In swimming Pool !!!

So here's the deal. I went for a swim keeping my iphone on my towel. Finished swimming and picked up my towel and and didnt realize my phone was on it. wiped myself and everything and was looking for my phone. And all of a sudden i stamped on something inside the pool to find out it was my IPHONE .

Took it out to find that it didnt respond to anything i did. And all of a sudden the phone went blank......

Went to my apartment and placed the phone in front of light bulb.

1st Day

Place the phone facing the back cover( apple logo ) towards and bulb and removing the sim card cover. Didnt turn it on or charged it .. NOTHING. DONT EVEN TOUCH IT... FORGET U HAVE AN IPHONE.

2nd Day

Woke up and turned my iphone towards the screen facing the light bulb. Dont turn it on or charge it. Still forget u have an IPHONE.

3rd Day

Woke up and changed the side again. The back cover facing the light bulb. Let it Go , dont touch it if u ever want it to work.

4th Day

Woke up and switched it on to find that there is still some water on the screen. But it switched and and tried to " slide to open" and it worked ... Well there was still some water in the screen and i knew the touch response would stop eventually if all the water hasent been evaporated. so kept the phone back in front on the light bulb ( the screen facing the bulb ).

5th day

woke up and tried to turn it on. Turned on well and the water thad evaporated too. And when i tried to " slide to open " it , it didnt respond to my touch. Grrr..... felt like throwing it out the window. I didnt . Placed it back in front of the light bulb facing the screen. Didnt touch it the whole day.

6th Day

woke up and prayed that it starts well. Switched on the Phone. The apple logo. "SLIDE TO OPEN" . and it opened and for the first time in 6 days i saw my home screen. Tried to open all the applications , and stated my music and kept it going on until battery went dead ( for any moisture left, the phone would heat up and drain it out ).

So thats my story hope it helps anyone out there. Just remember to place the IPHONE 6 Inches away from the bulb so it wouldnt heat it too much.

Well need any help let me know.

Thanx and best of luck
 
iphone + toilet = surprisingly happy ending

My iphone fell out of my back pocket and into the toilet last week -- and I didn't even realize it until AFTER I flushed. Awful feeling to look down and see your beautiful iphone at the bottom of the toilet with water flushing all around it. After washing it off -- more water, but what could I do? -- I proceeded to do the wrong, yet instinctive thing, which is to try to turn it on. Luckily for me (I think), it didn't respond at all, at which time I turned to the Internets for help. They advised me to do the rice trick, and I also learned about putting it in the oven, which scared me. Most of the stories I read involved a quick plunge into water -- a pool, a toilet, whatever -- whereas I knew mine had spent some time down there, in addition to the flushing, so I feared the worst. And I also decided to exercise a huge amount of patience and really let the thing dry out or else I feared that I would short it out and be out $400. So I took out the SIM card and left it in a container of rice for four days. Then yesterday, the 5th day, I plugged it in in the morning and got the white apple icon, but then it went dark again. Not quite ready. I put it out in the sunshine, black side up to absorb maximum heat, and let it sit for a few hours before putting in back in the rice for a couple more hours. Finally, I decided to try again. Plugged it in, got the apple icon which glowed steadily for a minute or so, and then VOILA! My appointment reminder beeped, I got my homepage, and everything -- EVERYTHING -- appeared to be working just fine. I'm only on day one having it back and I haven't tried the headphone jack yet, but phone, email, texting all seem to be in order. The screen looks great -- no apparent water damage. So my advice: Be patient. Let the rice to the trick. Use heat with caution. That extra day or two could save you $400, if the horror stories I read are any indication. Good luck!
 
I am an idiot and just WASHED MY IPHONE in the washing machine. After I called myself, it rang 3 times and then went to voice mail. I knew that it's in the washing machine. I took it out and it was off. I turned it on but it wouldn't turn on so I dried it with the hair dryer. Now, I just follow some of the instructions and put it in a bowl of uncooked rice and put it out in my car (current weather is 85 degree). I will let it sit there for 1 or 2 days and see if it turns back on. Any other advice what I should do beside feeling stupid? thanks :apple:

:mad:
 
so, today marks the 1 day my phone is off. It still wouldn't turn on. Should I continue to keep it in the rice jar in my car?
 
well most you sound rather luckey, I live in britian and got my iphone about 2 months ago, now considering I used to have a motorola... brick that was made in like... the 1500's I'm not sure, you can tell how amazed I was when I got my iphone, absolutly loved it, it felt like a new love had entered my life...

that was untill yesterday, when my iphone decided to for a swim, about 9 in the morning I get up, I automatically slap on some music to help me wake up and walk straight into the bathroom, I had my iphone in my left hand and turned to look in the mirror, in my groggyiness of just waking up my iphone slipped out of my hand... bounced onto the toilet seat and instead of trying to catch it or slap it away from the toilet seat, my hands hit my cheeks and time just slowed down while I said my long "NOOOOOOOO" and the next thing I heard was.... "plop" so I shouted and quickly got it out, washed my hands and dried my iphone as much as possible, and I look at the screen and it was kind of like a florescent lightbulb just dying out where the screen like flickers, as it's doing this I receive a text (perfect timing) I look at the txt and the screen dies.... so straight away I take the sim card out, my mother kindly suggest "why dont you take the battery out?" figgers really, the only usful advice for EVERYOTHER phone except this one, I put soem kitchen roll ontop of the boiler and leave my phone on there... panic for abit, then come online to read if it has happened to anyone else, and as I saw tis thread I saw other people's iphone get very wet and be ok, so I feel a slight amount of hope... but then I realised something, all of you have tried to switch your phone on and the apple logo appears then dissapears, well... mine isnt doing that... since it died, it has stayed dead, then I realized why, a couple of days before hand I put my zippo in my pocket and cracked the screen from top to bottom, now it's insured so it didnt really bother me, and thought to myself "oh it's fine it's working normally so I have nothing to worry about" but because of this crack I think water may have got in where it didnt on yours.

so right now I am doing as much as humanly possible to get it to switch on, so I now it is dried, I have put it on charge... nothing appears on the screen, so I have connected it to the pc, and it has connected :D :D :D.... but nothing has appeared on the screen, but when I plugged it into the pc it has done the same thing it did when I first got it, so I have to register my iphone all over again, because it has all gone back to it's factory settings, so now I am just installing it, and hoping and praying that maybe, the screen will give me a little flicker when it's all done.... I have lost all hope though.


<edit> finished installing my iphone and it came up with an error message... why am I not surprised?
 
Your humor is much appreciated!!

Thank you for digging me out of my severe iPhone-in-the-toilet depression. Fortunately my beloved iPhone only spent about half a second in the john before I dove in after it. I patted it dry and immediately pressed every button I could do convince myself that it would all be "OK." I learned that is possibly the worst instinct to follow. I'm on about 19 hours of iPhone in rice and intermittent light blow drying (and the consequent 19 hours of hard core iPhone withdraw). I have high hopes that it will recover soon!!
 
One day while enjoying a nice chili cheese burrito at taco bell I reached up to take a swig of Mountain Dew (dew of the gods!), when HORROR(!!!) lids comes off in my hand and cup spills onto table. I of course slide back to get a tsunami of dew headed toward me. Only after getting away from the table does my wife yell, "PHone!!!" My heart stopped as saw my beautiful white 3GS surrounded my a pool of yellow dew. I jumped up and grab the phone, bloating the sticky sweetness off. I sucked all of the fluid out of the holes and my phone never missed a beat. Didn't even change the water indicators even though it was almost completely covered in dew.
Sold phone to buy a new iPhone 4 later that year, forgot to mention that to the buyer (hehe). Pretty resilient phone. Not as good as my old Samsung Uproar (first mp3 player phone available) but still pretty good.
 
iPhone wet

I dropped my iPhone 4g in the toilet tonight. I didn't wanna turn it off, thinking it would not turn on again.
I received a Text normally, and took a couple of pics to see if the cam was working fine.
Then it turned off by itself, and the light from the camera flash won't go off. Does that mean it could still probably work? I hope I did not cause a court circuit I there trying to see if it worked....
I ran to the Internet, and saw the tips about the rice. Phone is deep inside a bag of basmati rice right now, but the light is still on.
Please, has anybody had this happen to you? Do you think my phone will survive? I am not eligible for a new one, I have no insurance, and I am highly addicted to the damn thing! Can anybody give me more advice on this please?
 
^^
You should have turned off your phone when it was exposed to water and put it in rice immediately afterwards.

Anyways, I'm not the type of person who would use their phone if it dropped in the toilet. I would probably get it replaced or something. That's just me. But knowing myself, I probably wouldn't have brought my phone into the bathroom.
 
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