The Bradford Clan: June 2009

Zeke likes the phone, a lot. He is quite social, with himself that is. So last night when he grabbed my phone off the couch and went running I didn't think much of it. That is until I heard a very unusual SPLASH! Knowing that Andy and Elli were both in the living room, and the only one moving around was Zeke I knew it was caused by him. Knowing that the last thing he had grabbed was my Blackberry I jumped up freaking out. Running into the kitchen I look into the sink to see my worst (electronic) fear coming to life. My precious phone was sunk to the bottom of the sink with raw chicken floating around it. What are the chances?!?!?! Our sink is filled with water maybe 3 times a month, of course Zeke chose the most inopportune moment to practice his tossing skills!!! Well here we are a few hours shy of 24 hours later and I am happy to report that the Blackberry is alive and kickin'. Here are the crucial steps that followed incase anybody finds themself in this situation.

1. Get it out of there IMMEDIATELY. The phone was submerged for maybe 5-10 seconds MAX. As long as it takes from me to run from my couch into the kitchen and retrieve. Who knows if time is of the essence, but my guess is the less time exposed the better.

2. Rip off the silicone cover, pull off the battery cover and rip out the battery.

3. Take a towel to these pieces quickly.

4. Hand phone off to husband to have him blow it out with the canned air. I would say he was blowing it for a good few minutes. (*** We learned this with the macbook when Elli decided to miss the table and dump a bottle of water on my keyboard. Andy picked the laptop up flipped it and blew it with canned air for several minutes. Never an issue, no damage. :) ***)

5. DO NOT DO THIS STEP!!! Andy tried to put the battery back in at this point, thankfully he didnt try to actually power it up. I think we may have lost the phone if he had. We at this point finally remember to pull the memory card and SIM card out. This should be done at the same time as pulling the battery. :)

6. I read online that sticking it in the freezer has helped others, so into the freezer it goes. It is in there probably a good 5 minutes before the next step.

7. I continue reading online to find that soaking it in raw rice has also helped. So now we dump rice into a casserole dish and submerge my phone, placing it back into the freezer.

8. Right before bed, so now 2-3 hours after it has been in the freezer covered in rice, I pull the dish from the freezer and set it on the counter adding the battery into the rice just in case.

9. Go to sleep praying that the phone will survive. After checking ebay and Craigslist I find that it is going to cost just as much as it did to buy it to replace it. Dreading having to earn $300+ I try to stay optimistic.

10. Wake up around 7 and retrieve the phone and battery from the rice. Stick them outside on a towel. Being in the lovely heat of an Arizona summer the phone will be able to sun bathe in 100+ degree temperatures.

11. 4:00 rolls around and I decide it is time to finally check on the phone. I really wanted to be patient and give it until after the sun was down later this evening. I do not have the patience for this. I am lucky I made it to 4. First I grab our trusty canned air and give the phone a good spray. Stick battery in and power up. Breathe a nice sigh of relief as you see the screen at least power up. Head upstairs to plug it in to the charger to see if this helps speed the process up. See your trusty homescreen reminding you that you are SIM card less. Power off, insert SIM card and memory card, replace battery, and power back up. Jump for joy as you hear all of your text/IM/email messages come in from the past day.

And that, my friends, is how we saved my Blackberry. I think some keys things that really helped our case was 1) the silicone cover, 2) our quick retrieval from the water and the use of canned air, and 3) the AZ heat. We DID not apply artifical heat at all, I read that this was not wise, and so we resisted the temptation for instant gratification. I hope if anyone ever finds themselves in a similar situation that they can have as great of a result as we did. :)