Life of the IT-Drummer

About a month ago, my little sister got herself a new mobile phone. It was a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, with a high pixel camera, great mp3 capabilities and other features, and my sister was happy with it. Unfortunately, my sister is not the best at taking good care of her phones (at the end, her last one was a total mess, I’ve never seen a phone in such bad shape, it was taped together with duct tape). Hence, one night, she dropped it by accident on the ground .. into a puddle/stream of water … and didn’t realize she had lost the phone from her pocket. The phone was not found until the next day.

The phone would of course not turn on. It’s inside was full of water and dirt, and the inside of the screen was filled with water, and it soon became clear that this seemed like a lost project. They tried cleaning it, heating it in the oven on low temperature, but the phone status remained the same: It would not turn on.

Some weeks later, I asked to see the phone to see how bad it was, and yes, it was pretty damn bad. The inside looked half rusted or at least pretty dirty. Still I thought I would try to fix it, and connected the phone to the charger, hoping that the screen would light up. But the phone did not react. I left it for dead, and we spent the rest of the day looking for another phone on da intarwebz.

Yesterday, I would say around two-three weeks since that time, my sister was awoken in the middle of the night by her “broken” phone ringing. It was the wake-up-service on the phone, and she could not believe what she heard. She attached her sim-card in the phone, and “booted” it up. Miraculously, everything was working just as before it was broken! The camera, sending sms, the music-player, it all worked! And this concludes this happy story.

Has anybody ever experienced something similar? Are the mobile phones today more sturdy than before? I think it’s quite amazing.