Sunday, July 23, 2017

How to Protect Your Phone from Water and Summer Heat

FTC disclosure:  This is a sponsored post.  All opinions are my own.  This post may contain affiliate links.

What if I told you the best way to protect your iPhone 7 from heat and water is to stay indoors all summer?  Well, that would likely do the trick unless you dropped your phone in the toilet, but it wouldn't be very much fun, would it?  Well, here's a few ideas on how you can have fun and protect your phone.

With many manufactures recommend keeping a phone between 32 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit ( zero through thirty-five Centigrade) summer is a time you need to make sure your phone doesn't exceed the maximum recommended temperature.  If a phone overheats, the insides may become damaged, causing different problems from data loss to the battery could leak, or even explode and ruin the device completely.  I don't know about you, but I want my vacation photos of us visiting a town in Wisconsin that had a ton of trolls.  When you get my husband and me near a statue, we love taking goofy photos, and our photos of our trip through the midwest is something I want to keep forever.

When your phone gets wet it can cause corrode the electric part of the phone causing it to short circuit and keep the phone from working.  This could happen from dropping your phone in a body of water, swimming pool, being caught in the rain or your toddler taking selfies in the bathroom without your knowledge (okay, that last one can happen all year round, because. . . two year olds.)

Well, it's always better to be safe than sorry, so many phone owners purchase insurance.  (And keep their phone locked so you don't have 500 photos taken from a child's eye view!)  Many carriers, including U.S. Cellular offer device protection which of course offers replacement, malware protection, and data back up.  So head to your local U.S. Cellular to ask about their insurance -- as soon as you finish reading this article, of course!

If you are going to be doing any beach going, you might want to purchase a water resistant case for your phone.  OtterBox offers cases for a number of devices including the iPhone7 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S8 as well as many others. These might seem expensive at first but my Otterbox has saved my phone many times.  (As well as others.  That's the brand I always use, but there are others on the market such as LifeProof .)

A very innovative waterproof solution is DryCase.  This is a waterproof pouch that will fit most to all phone sizes, so you wouldn't have to buy a new one whenever Apple or Samsung release a new phone.  It even has an arm strap for when you are engaging in sports.  You can use the phone while it is in the case, taking photos, texting, and more.  After all, you have to post that photo of your feet on the beach with a pina colada beside them to show your friends back home you are in paradise and they are in their cubicle, right?  You can always use a plastic bag for a homemade (and more risky) protection against sand and dirt, but why take the chance?

So what should you do if your phone does fall into water?  Well, the experts at U.S. Cellar recommend the following:

  • Turn off the phone immediately.
  • Remove the battery if possible.
  • Place the phone near a fan (not heat) while
  • placing the phone in rice or desiccant packets (more commonly known as Silica Gel.)
Keep your phone out of direct sunlight in a car.  A few years ago, my husband left a can of unopened soda in our car and we returned to find it had exploded because even out of direct sunlight, a car's temperature can reach over 150 degrees.  People have filmed video of baking cookies in a car.  You wouldn't leave your phone in an oven, so don't leave your phone in a car.  Even if you are at a place that forbids phones, there will usually be a way to keep them safe indoors if it is hot outside.  I was at a taping of a popular TV show a few years ago, and they allowed us to check phones like you might coats at a fancy restaurant.    

Finally, if you home remedies for trying to help a phone that has been damaged by heat or water don't work, take the phone back to the wireless carrier you purchased it from.  (For me that would be U.S. Cellular.)  I love the friendly employees at U.S. Cellular and they even helped me with a phone one time that I thought would no longer work!  Now that's what I call service -- in more ways than one!

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