Technobabble

Ever Run an iPod Through the Wash? How About a Cell Phone?

Posted by on Sep 26, 2007 | 11 Comments

The smaller that technology becomes, the easier it is to forget it’s there. Say an iPod. Or a cell phone. How easy is it to forget that you left one of those little critters in a pants pocket? And when you throw those pants onto the wash pile… well… you get the idea.

It’s even worse if you wear those ever-handy cargo pants, with a plethora of pockets that can hide a bounty of tiny techno-wonders. Why you could lose a thousand dollars worth of electronic goodies with just one whoops…

In today’s installment of Honey, I Laundered the Kids Technology, read the gory details as Barbara Feldman runs her iPod Shuffle through the wash…

[tags]ipod, cell phone, washing machine[/tags]

  • jeff schwarz

    Last winter, I left my Motorola V557 in my winter coat pocket just before I snow blowed the sidewalk, facing a lot of blowback. Unknown to me, my pocket filled with packed snow. I came inside and hung up my coat, and relaxed after dinner. Prior to going to bed, I put on my coat to take out the dogs, reached in my pocket and found my phone under several inches of water (my pocket is waterproof, as I discovered). The little telltale dot was bright blue.
    Remembering something I heard several years ago, I removed the back and battery, shook out most of the water, and placed the phone in my toaster oven at 200 degrees F overnight.
    Much to my pleasure, I reassembled the phone and it WORKED!!! It’s still working fine.

  • http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan Price

    I ran my Motorola C350 through the wash. Technically, it was my wife. She blames me because she doesn’t check pockets. I always check pockets. :/

    After letting it dry out, it worked fine, but the backlight started going downhill and finally just quit working. Otherwise, the phone worked. My wife’s C350 stopped making noise (had to be on vibrate to actually know it was ringing, and one drop too many as the screen is out of place.

    The whole family now has V3s. And none of them have been ran through the wash.

  • http://lockergnome.com/loveduckie Luc

    I think it depends on how lucky you get, but normally if you use your piece of technology whilst having water in it, then it’s simply asking for trouble.

    What with electricity conducting with water and what not.

    But you’ll also notice on circuitboards nowadays the tracks are covered over by what seems to be melted plastic or water-proof material (atleast in this situation.)

    Some could argue, smaller is handy but not when you forget it’s there.

  • Angelika

    yesterday super smart me, put my sheets into the wash without noticing my cellphone was mixed admist them. my phone went through the sanitary cycle (156mintues) and stayed there the entire day. This morning i went to go fet my sheets and lo and behold my cell phone was there being stupid i tried to turn it on . i plugged it in to charge and everything. i wish i would have read all these articles before i reacted. im gunna be in a wholeeeeeeeeee lot of trouble when my mom comes back from work thats for sure.

  • Danny Kemal

    I left my iPod Nano 1st generation in my jeans which went into a HOT cycle. When I got them out, I was like “Oh sh*t!”
    After 4 days of drying, and I plugged it into USB, the apple logo appeared but then fuzzed out. This is because the battery is so dead that it doesn’t hold enough power to keep the iPod running when connected to USB. On AC power on the other hand, it works as if nothing happened to it. AC provides a lot more power than USB. All my songs are still there, and play but I just can’t sych anymore so I am going to get a new battery soon.

  • http://remarkablogger.com Michael Martine

    I love the service overall but it’s a bit strange that the desktop app has FEWER features than the web interface. Where’s my social sharing?

  • http://twitter.com/justacityboy Peter

    That’s all great, but I’m not allowed to stream music at work over the corporate network. Is this app available on Android so I can listen through my cell phone?

    • http://twitter.com/motch_master Matyas Lajos Homer

      Yes, there is a Pandora App for Android

  • Anykey

    Ya, I agree with MM below – just got a (although free) Game Changer scoring app (currently for baseball, plans for basketball, football, and hopefully soccer) and they flat out say on their site they have no intentions of making a laptop/desktop app. At all? At all. That is complete and utter nonsense to me. Their logic points? 1 is that they say there aren’t enough dugouts or press-boxes for their market. Huh? Their market is little league (granted), but high school and college! No press-boxes? Please.

    Anyway to my point on Pandora directly, I have a deference to a fact in the article. I have the pay version,and there is definably a click limit even for that – it is NOT unlimited, You can click up to 6 times per hour with the paid – unless they have changed it since February 10th 2011?

  • http://profiles.google.com/techie.geek.girl Tracy Fortune

    Loved Pandora at the same time lala.com came out & offered users who could swap CD’s.

    In the time since, I have moved to Australia (lost access to my Pandora library because of) & have found other things to take their place (in case they believe they’re special).

  • Anonymous

    You may want to clarify. You stated the 3GS has a “lack of Flash” which as written implies the iPhone 4 uses Adobe Flash. I believe the article should state the 3GS “lacks a flash” in reference to the camera.