back to article Nearly one in 10 Brits 'fess to shower phone faux pas

Promoting its waterproofing spray, Oxford-based P2i has polled punters on the soggy environments to which their phones are exposed and expectations on their survival. Three per cent of the thousand respondents regularly share a sauna with their phone, and expect it to work afterwards, but it's the eight per cent who take a …

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  1. TeeCee Gold badge
    Happy

    I took a Samsung A300 swimming once.

    Ironicly I could even see water in the "porthole" display on the front by the time I realised my mistake. Made a nasty zapping noise when I plugged it in later too.

    I dismantled it and left it in the Croatian sunshine to dry, reassembled and everything was fine. The geeky satisfaction one gets from taking a set of miniature screwdrivers on holiday is as nothing compared to the really smug geeky satisfaction one gets from needing them......

    1. Anonymous John

      Re: I took a Samsung A300 swimming once.

      How many screws did you have left over after reassembling it? Any pingfuckits?

    2. Kool-Aid drinker
      Thumb Up

      Re: I took a Samsung A300 swimming once.

      I put a Motorola L6 through the washing machine on the 40 degree cotton setting. It worked fine after being dried out on the radiator for a few hours, and still works to this day, although it has long since been relegated to backup duties.

      1. James Micallef Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        At a friend's bachelor's party....

        ... said friends brother could not find his phone, so he rang it from another phone to try and locate it. Cue a bright light starting to shine from the bottom of the pool. He dived in for it, took battery out and left it to dry for a day in the sun...and it still worked. It was a Nokia, don't know the model but well done to the Finns for producing a phone that not only survived a few minutes in the pool but was actually ringing while at the bottom of it

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "and are genuinely surprised when they're told that a single drop of rain (in the right place) can render their pride and joy into an astoundingly expensive door wedge."

    I would be surprised if a single drop of rain ruined my phone...I recently dropped my HTC Sensation in the bath...A proper dunking, fully submerged for at least 5secs...It didn't look happy, but after a few hours drying out (in nothing more than sunlight) it sprang back to life, and has been working for the past moth flawlessly (or as flawlessly as an HTC gets anyway). I didn't even have to take more than the battery out to do this either.

    1. G4Z

      lucky you

      My sensation was in my sports bag during a football match, one intense rain shower killed the screen. Sent it away for repairs (not covered under warranty) when it came back the touch screen was replaced but knackered witha fault very similar to the 'grounding fault'. Nothing I did could make it work properly so I just replaced it with an Xperia Arc.. which is just... not as fast :(

      I do think phones should be capable of being submerged to be honest, I expect to be able to carry it anywhere in any weather. It is not an unreasonable design consideration.

  3. jake Silver badge

    Rather than re-type it, see:

    ThisOldPost.

    I still carry the same phone. They don't make 'em like they used to ...

  4. Fishy

    They are mobile!

    People in the office who leave their phones on their desks and then walk off drive me potty. The thing rings and rings and their is no one to answer it. I'm always tempted to dunk their phone into their tea for them.

    How many phones get killed because of fed up office colleges?

    1. tfewster
      Devil

      Re: They are mobile!

      Place the phone in an empty cup, with a note: "Next time you leave your phone to ring and annoy everyone, the cup will have water in it"

      It worked with one offender

      Regarding the main article, I'm simultaneously amazed at phones that can't take a light rain shower (real need usage: Standing by your broken down car by the side of a motorway) and by people who think "mobile" means "use it anywhere, regardless of hazard & propriety"

    2. Anonymous Custard
      Devil

      Re: They are mobile!

      Isn't that the one where (for a first offense) you switch the language settings of the phone over to something suitably annoying like Portuguese or Japanese, or (for a repeat offense) sign them up to any expensive and embarassing text messaging service you can lay your hands on?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They are mobile!

      I always leave mine at my desk, no matter where I am in the office... I do however leave it on silent, not even vibrate... something I consider a courtesy to everyone where I work.

    4. Stevie

      Bah!

      Or, you know, just turn them off.

      They have an off-switch, and just about everyone but my mum has voice mail so no urgent missive will be lost.

      And no office college could complain about having their phone non-destructively turned off under circumstances of such boorishness. Neither could a colleague.

  5. Alan W. Rateliff, II
    Paris Hilton

    Single drop of rain

    My Sony Ericsson K850i got a little drop of rain on its screen once, apparently in exactly the right spot. Rendered it almost completely unusable for a couple of hours. The K850i has three touch "sensitive" areas at the bottom of the screen that it uses for its left, middle, and right soft-keys. I'm not certain how these work, exactly, but the water which became trapped under the keypad bezel in that area certainly interfered with this magical operation.

    General rule of thumb for me for a large portion of my short years on this rock: moisture + gadget = bad. Originally that first value was "wet," but experience showed that just simple moisture could cause problems. This new theory came about as a result of carrying my pocket calculator tucked "safely" inside my snow suit.

    I have to ask, do people REALLY take their mobes into the shower?

    Paris, one little drop of wetness and absolutely worthless for a couple of hours.

  6. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Trollface

    "...more slap-handed with their drinks..."

    No wonder if you consider swills like Jack Daniel's, Budweiser...

  7. TechnicianJack
    FAIL

    Title should be '1 in 10 people are idiots.'

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone given their e-reader a dunk in the bath? That's gotta be more common than taking a phone with you...

  9. squilookle

    "Three per cent of the thousand respondents regularly share a sauna with their phone"

    Even if the phone could survive it, would the surface of the phone not get so hot that it would be uncomfortable to hold in your hand, let alone to your ear? Especially if it happens to have a metal casing, but plastic ones too, I would have thought.

  10. Craig 12

    I've seen plenty of people in our gym's sauna using their phone... seem to work fine for them.

    I took a Casio waterproof video camera snorkelling on holiday a few years ago. It died after approximately 45 seconds on first use. I didn't even get to the coral reef :(

    1. Andus McCoatover
      Windows

      That'll be a British sauna, stoked up to something warm-ish, like 60C

      Try it in a Finnish one, wound up to 95C.

      You wouldn't be able to touch the bloody phone after 10 minutes! Even the glass of a bottle of beer gets unbearably hot after a short time. (But Finns have 'grunt' and will bear the temperature of the bottle as long as the alcohol hasn't been persuaded to evaporate...)

  11. SiempreTuna
    WTF?

    Unbelievable!

    .. not that people take phones into showers (people are idiots) but that mobile phones - that would be, phones that are SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED for OUTDOOR use - can be killed by a drop of rain.

    How the **** have phone companies been getting away with that one?! Do fit-for-purpose rules not apply?

  12. Fading
    Facepalm

    Reminds me

    So I arrive home to a disgruntled SWMBO whose phone was no longer working properly. "Did you drop it or anything?" I asked. "No nothing just stopped working." She replied in all innocence. Engage geek mode - rebooting, removing battery, restore to factory settings... the usual couple of hours of wasted time and frustration. The smart phone still acted as if it had a mind of it's own.

    "So when did it start acting up?" I queried after another reboot into random behaviour.

    "When I was in the bath." She said.

    It's then I decided to sit her down and have "the talk" - where I explain that water and electircal devices are not friends.

  13. Why Not?
    Facepalm

    Flushed with success

    My 'better' half dropped hers down a public loo. Then asked me to fix it.

    I couldn't I was too busy laughing.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Flushed with success

      Made me think of this story from El Reg a while back...

      If people are taking their phones into showers and saunas, where are they keeping them? Can you now get a kangaroo style skin-pouch, in order to never be separated from your tech goodies? Or are people chatting away merrily, and just stepping into the shower with it held to their ear? In which case, that's incredibly rude to the person on the other end.

      Or is one supposed to shower fully clothed? In which case I've been doing it wrong all my life. I can sell my washing machine, just have one set of clothes (which will always be as clean as I am) - and get an industrial tumble dryer big enough for me to fit in. Bonus, I can sell my bath towels too...

      1. Shaun 1

        Re: Flushed with success

        Or people could have them in their hands, maybe using them to browse the internet, maybe using them to post comments on El Reg while in the bath.

        Just a possibility.

        -

        Posted from my mobile phone

  14. Graham Bartlett

    Baby dribble

    My Nokia E72 seems to be fairly resistant to baby dribble. (And believe me, it's had some serious suck, er, soak tests.) I suspect drool is viscous enough that it doesn't easily get into the works.

  15. James O'Brien

    Never killed a phone or electronic device due to water but my EVO 3d went flying out of my pocket the other day after I decided to try closing the hood of a car with my thumb under it. Cracked the aluminum bezel around the screen and its working fine....in a lot of ways even gets better reception with that 2 inch chunk missing....

  16. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Shower users...

    Is that 8 per cent of all cell phone users? Or is it 8 per cent of all people who have killed a cell phone through water exposure, this is how they did it? It's a very, very different question.

  17. Jim 59

    Overboard

    Samsung fell out of my pocket and overboard while rowing on a Lake in Milton Keynes. Afterwards invested in one of those waterproof pouches that keep your phone dry and float.

  18. Chris 171
    Facepalm

    N8 bog snorkelling special.

    Poigniant timing seeing as I couldnt have got a better bullseye when killing mine last Friday.

    Alarm not turning off, then trip, slip, splosh, fu*k, dead.

    Still, the repalcement arrived on Saturday & updated to Belle immediately so all is not lost..

  19. Joseph Bryant

    washing machine

    My old Nokia candybar, incredibly, survived a full washing machine cycle in my jeans pocket. I took the cover off, gave it a blast with a hair drier, and left it a day or two, and when I put it back together it was totally fine.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Throughout Winter my SGS2 has been in my very warm shirt pocket, wrapped under several layers of clothing, it often comes out with a slight moist sheen on on the screen and continues to work fine. It has a "screen-guard" on the front so maybe that's catching the moisture and keeping it away from the actual glass.

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Free Clue

      The glass is not the bit you need to keep water off.

  21. Mike Flex

    the eight per cent who take a handset into the shower

    It's nice to shower with the one you love.

  22. MahFL22
    Thumb Up

    Blackberry.

    Mine, in an robust cloth case, as the Blackberry ones always break, fell off my belt into a freshly flushed loo, I grabbed it real quick and had no problems, the outside of the phone was just a little damp.

  23. richard 7

    Nokia with deathwish?

    Had an older Nokia Slide phone a good few years back, first time I was up to my neck in the River hamble when I realised it was still in my back pocket. Took it out, dried it and left it be, fine, worked a treat. Two weeks later on the same river, same spot working on the same boat I slipped and went off the side, on the way over belting the bit of wood it was sat on. It may have survived, I'll never know seeing as it cleared a railway bridge and came down a good hundred meters or more from where I was.

    1. Kool-Aid drinker
      Thumb Up

      Re: Nokia with deathwish?

      They were properly made in those days. I had an old Nokia company phone fly out of my pocket and bounce down the platform at King's Cross when I was running to catch a train. Didn't even scratch it, and it carried on working until the company supplied me with an "upgrade" a year or two later.

  24. scarshapedstar
    Linux

    Shower user here

    Okay, I don't try to talk on the damn thing, but my shower has a sizable recess for shampoo bottles and I stash my HTC Incredible in there, safely behind a huge empty bottle of T-Gel. I can listen to Slacker News or Rachel Maddow in the morning, and it amplifies the sound nicely to boot. No ill effects from the humidity.

  25. Stevie

    Bah!

    Step 1, dress in bathing costume and tee-shirt.

    Step 2, place Motorola Razor in pocket.

    Step 3, install "rainbird" type lawn sprinklers and adjust, congratulating now-drenched self on wise choice of clothing.

    Step 5, reach into pocket for phone...

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ha

    nephew was doing what teenage boys do in the bath* when his mum walked in on him, to cover his embarassment he reflexively used his hands and dunked his Blackberry. Killed it totally, even after two days drying on the radiator it showed no life.

    *BBMing his friends, what else?

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