N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

A few days ago, I clumsily dropped my N900 in a bucket of water. I immediately took it out, dabbed it with towels and immediately took out the battery and dumped the entire apparatus in a container full of rice. I put it in there for an entire 20 hour period and then decided to put in my battery to see if it worked. It would turn on and display the NOKIA screen with the white background and then have the dots appear to mean its loading. But it never loads and it immediately goes blank. I plug it into the wall charger and its picking it up with the orange LED light constantly on. When it is plugged into the charger though, it keeps displaying the Nokia Screen without a white background and it keeps rebooting. Then not seeing my home screen decided that it might still not be dry so I put it in a dehydrator at 120 degrees for 5 hours to dehydrate any water that might still be in it. I put the battery back in to no avail and same future as the one before. Then I decided maybe it is a battery problem or it got shorted so I ordered a new one and it got here finally and I realized it is the same problem as before.

Also, the keyboard back light seems to be shorted because half of it is lit up and half of it is not when I seem to connect it to the battery. Please help my phone, I barely had it for 4 months now and barely got to use it to its full potential.

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Glad to read that someone used brain after accident (removing battery, rice, etc) and sad to hear, that device seems to be somehow damaged.

Still, it's a pity that You hadn't googled for "disassembling" video - it's relatively easy process on N900, and separating parts as much as You're willing to disassemble them, would help in drying. Your keyboard leds seems to be somehow affected - personally, I would try full disassembling and covering it with silicon gel (instead of rice - silicon gel is cheap, available in good camera stores, and can be re-used), it's much better @ absorbing humidity (be sure to use air-tight container, or you will absorb humidity from room air, instead of N900). I'm not sure if there is a point to do it after such long time, but even if there are slim chances of it fixing anything now, IMO it's worth a try.

I suppose You were not using backupmenu, so Your only way to go now is flashing (see wiki article reflashing). If that doesn't help, try with R&D mode - maybe watchdogs are kicking in, due to some elements being damaged (leds, led-controller goes berserker?).

And, while we're talking about booting - You mentioned leds, so at least boot is proceeding to the point of loading their drivers. I suppose, that it's doing full initial boot, as You can see five dots. Still, it doesn't mean't that for sure everything will be all-right - You may have, for example, eMMC damaged (thus optfs not present), but for sure You're not screwed totally. Basically, don't get desperate, but also don't get hopes too high.

Good luck and report back, how it goes/ended!

/Estel

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Well here is a funny video where you can find a little light at the end of the tunnel =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC9gW3Sfiig

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

you should never intoduce heat into a wet cell phone there are adhesives that can break down from it ...use a wet dry vac or low pressure compressed air to get the moisture out

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

well he did put it in a dehydrator at 120°.

I've never heard of this before but this doesn't actually sounds safe to put a phone in.

@vroom605 i feel sorry for your loss. :(
i hope flashing will solve your problems! ;)

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

I hope he's talking about fahrenheit


OT: At first, it looked like your battery was dead, when you drop a device in the water the battery drains instantly, so it could be a boot loop due to lack of power. Odd that it won't boot when on a charger..

I'd go with the plan described above. Try and save whats possible to be left saving :( Long-term, I guess I must bring you the bad news, because you did not disassemble the entire phone, there is a high percentage chance some humidity was left in there.. If that rusts, game-over (Have had that happen to me too many times)

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Actually, it isn't entirely tragic. Sure, I would not recommend boiling (literally) N900, but there exist high-efficient, "home" methods of fixing certain issues with motherboards (ball-type soldering getting lose on graphic chips) that include putting motherboard into 200 Celsius degrees oven for ~8 min ;)

So, basically, this wasn't most clever thing to do, but could be worse. BTW, I've said that silicon gel can be re-used - after it accumulate hydration, You put it into 120 Celsius degrees owen for 2-3 hours (or, dehydrator ;) ). So, it was basically done, but with N900 instead of silicon gel.

/Estel

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

ahh.. take it apart (youtube it) and clean it all out?? with some alcohol..

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Just for the record - it does not. First of all, protecting PCB would kick in. Even more - I've once thrown LI-Po cell - "naked", without any stickers, tape, or protecting PCB - into jar full of water (regular, not destilated). Left overnight, at the morning - after drying it - it got exact same voltage, was not "expanded" etc. Water just got too much resistance, to allow battery + and - to short in such distance @ ~3,7V.

Of course, for micro-sized components inside N900, this looks differently - and possible oxidization looks even worse - so, it's definitely kinda-deadly. But not for battery.

/Estel

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

overruling argument =) i just talk out of personal experience

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

I'd say give it some time. When I did it, initially I was having issues which tended to fade over time. For a while, the cell radio was not working, so I couldn't use it as a phone. Eventually, it did start working again.

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

I see, but I wonder what a kind of personal experience was it - IMO, discharging "instantly" isn't possible at all. Otherwise, You would see battery glowing blue and smoking like hell, cause 5Wh (standard battery capacity) or even 1Wh released in timeframe of second or two would be power equivalent of 18KWh (for 5Wh battery) and 3,6KW (for 1Wh charger battery), respectively. I suppose battery would melt, and water around it boiled, due to such energy instant release. Especially, having in mind water resistance.

(equivalent experiment would be to connect unprotected LiPo cell + to wall socket ground - battery would expand and explode quite quickly, but still, it would be unable to discharge in second or two. Probably, it would explode before discharging. DON'T try this at home...)

/Estel

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Well, I don't really know if you should call it discharging. In my lifetime I dropped 3 phones in the water, n82, n97 and (unfortunatly) a n900. In all cases, the battery was full (or at least enough power in it), but once I took it out the water, let it dry, and boot it up, it was empty and needed to be charged in order to work. So my conclusion was: It drains when you drop it in water! :D

Oh and for the record, they all worked fine until they mysteriously (and gradually) broke down after a couple of weeks. Probably rust...

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

Yea after hearing your guys' responses, I kind of just gave up on my phone and let it be bricked. Its not until recently that has changed. I went to India and got a new power assembly chip because Nokia reps thought it be the cause of it not booting back up. I also replaced the battery with a new one. I turned on the phone, it booted up fine and it came all the way to the lock screen. I was really surprised. I went home and wanted to flash it immediately. But when I got home, it didn't turn back on. I plug it into the USB and the home charger but all I see is the red notification light coming back on. I try to turn on the phone but no avail. I want to flash this but the flasher isn't picking up USB device because the device is not turned on.

Guys as for disassembling the phone, I disassembled it immediately. I took off the screen, took off the board and put the entire disassembled apparatus in the dehyrdator at 100F.

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

You can try with this spray, cost like 2-3€..it makes wonders.
Keep LCD away from this thing, it gets inside in no time:)

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/...120627_001.jpg

Re: N900 Water Damage - Solutions to rebooting Nokia Screen
 

i am lucky enough..... i dropped mine also, i remove battery, sim, SD Card and put it under Ceiling fan as in india here is summer at its top.... after 8-10 hours put all in it and its wake up like before.....