With replacement white strip installed
If this isn’t a scam, I can’t imagine what a valid reason for this design could be.
Cellphone Battery Designed To Fail At First Drop Of Water?
I recently dropped my cell phone into the last sip of coffee I had in my cup, so I know the liquid didn’t penetrate to any meaningful hardware, especially considering I plucked it out immediately. Stickers, on both the inside of the battery casing (on the phone) and the battery itself, were pink/red when I opened the battery cover, however, very little moisture was present. 5 minutes later my phone turned itself off and I wasn’t able to turn it back on until I plugged it into my charger at the end of the day. The phone blinked the ‘Charge Complete’ signal to me almost immediately, but when I unplugged it from the charger it immediately turned off again and I wasn’t able to turn it on without it being plugged into the charger.
Here’s where the super-sketchiness comes into play. I noticed that the pink sticker on the battery was covering an indented rectangular area, so I pulled off the sticker which revealed two small brass sensors. When I cut out and installed a plain piece of white paper to replace the color changed sticker, the phone miraculously began taking a charge again and when I unplugged it from the charger, it didn’t turn off.
It is also my opinion that they have gone so far as to implement ‘water activated failure mechanisms’ into phones and batteries in an effort to create replacement sales for products that aren’t really damaged.
This isn’t a scam. It’s a means of population control. When people are thrown overboard from a ship or a crashed plane and swim to the nearest island, they won’t be able to call for help. God, it’s so obvious.
I wouldn’t be surprised. The cellphone industry is as sleazy as any used car dealer. Also carriers love these sensors. It gets them out of replacing your phone after you shelled out hundreds of dollars on monthly insurance. They can all suck THE BIG ONE.
Or it’s simply for safety reasons…
Yes, I’m an Apple fanboy. But I must wonder, where are the class action lawsuits for batteries that disable them selves in the event they come in contact with a liquid? Sure, you can remove it yourself. But what good is that if the phone won’t recognize it? Here’s a thought. Maybe Apple isn’t the only one that thinks a battery should be replaced after it has been dunked.
Doesn’t lithium catch fire in water? I googled this and the batteries “are” supposed to be sealed so water damage danger should not be an issue. Still, water sensors are a nice way to prevent fraud by the consumer claiming a defective product. It could be on the battery, or anywhere else? On the battery, the phone becomes non-operative while the water event is fresh in your mind making the lack of customer support more defensible?
Yes, good blend of technology and psychology and greed, all in one.
I had a similar problem where the phone would not work and would say charge complete even though nothing had happened. My phone was still under warrenty but I do agree something is up.
Lithium produces a very caustic hydroxide when in contact with moisture and this would quickly eat out any circuitry. It turns water pink. The pink paper patch, mentioned in the original post, is pink because lithium has reacted with water, producing caustic lithium hydroxide, which turns a phenolphthalein tracer in the paper, pink.
So, why is this a scam again? A product designed to disable itself at first sign of danger? Oh, I guess this is the flip side (this complaining) to the lawsuit for the companies that have products that harm someone when they get wet…
Ye just can’t win.
All of this sounds interesting, so I checked my phone and lo and behold it had that battery in it!
So I pulled it out and looked for the pink. Yep, it was there and the pink diamond grid patch was there.
Nope, it has never gotten wet other than whatever moisture is in the ambient air in the middle south, but we did have a major drought here this summer — only had to mow about six times all summer.
My battery works just fine for over a year now.
The pink grid looks like it was printed on.
Lots of idle speculation, so I don’t feel bad about adding some…
Those contacts have some purpose in; a) the manufacturing process, b) testing, or c) another application of that design.
The very fact that shorting those two contacts renders the battery unusable tells us nothing. There are other, superior ways to permanently disable the battery under whatever conditions; a piece of paper? stuck in a visible location, easily replaced – is NOT for the purpose of disabling the battery. That’s paranoia.
The original pink – red thingie got wet. It shorted the contacts. When it was removed, the short was removed and the battery was back to normal. I don’t think we’ll have to call in Robert Stack on this one…
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. 😉
what manufacturers use these batteries? anyone know?
its not a scam, its a safety feature… however, it is true that trace moisture in the air (humidity) can also activate the color strip… better hope you’ve got insurance w/ yer cellphone provider… the scam comes in when, if you dont have insurance, you have to purchase a new battery – that one looks like it could be about $55-$75. good luck w/ that.
I don’t know. My wife dropped her cell phone in a lake with exactly that battery. Leaving it with the battery out for a couple of days dried out the cell and battery and the phone worked fine afterward.
My point exactly, M Scott. If LG “designed it to fail”, they sure did a lousy fucking job of it, seeing how it only requires pulling off a very conspicuous, trivially accessible sticker… or simply letting it dry out. The idiot “Tim,” who posted this to the Consumerist, is – wait for it… an idiot.
He ignorantly misidentifies contacts as “sensors”, pulls off a sticker, which is wet and causing a short circuit – or at least improperly loading the phone’s power input – and puts a dry piece of paper in it’s place – and when the no-longer-shorted battery resumes normal function, he calls it “miraculous.” Calling him an idiot is too kind, actually. 🙂
i agree with the guy. i had a phone that got a little wet it was on the counter in the bathroom while i took a shower. it reacted similarly to what this guy claims. i didnt check it for one of these odd water patch test things but im sure it had one. it never worked and it was only 30 days old! so i called the manufacturer and they were like, well u have to send it in so we can take a look, blah blah blah. that would have taken forever, AND it would have cost a ton to replace in the long run anyway AND the insurance would not have covered it! so instead i just bought a new phone. it is a good way for them to get out of replacing old phones and not have to pay for them, blah blah.
i think it is shitty really. if the product has the capability of withstanding water damage why not just let it, so we can all be happy.
A cellphone is not designed to, nor should it be expected to, stand up to that humidity. Neither are a lot of other electronics, unless they’re specifically designed to be water-resistant / waterproof.
Next time you take a shower, bring your laptop, your desktop PC, and your TV in there with you. You’ll be lucky if any of them survive.
#10
And that’s why Apple charges $50 for replacing the battery of the iPods.
This is simply a moisture indicator strip. Almost all cell phones and batteries have them now. This is so the vendor can refuse warranty repairs if the phone or battery have even thought about getting wet.
I have seen this personally.
Why is the phone *not* designed to get wet? Watches are generally water resistant. The phone isn’t going to be used in a laboratory environment, it is going to be used in the real world… where things like rain and puddles are common. OMFG.
People sometimes get in the shower, get caught in the rain, get thrown in the pool – and their watch goes with them and gets wet, because, unlike a telephone, it is worn on the body, at all times.
Add to that the painfully obvious fact that it is simple to make something water resistant that is only ever opened up every couple of years to change the battery. A modern watch is basically a watch chip and a display chip, in a little case that can be sealed with 2 or 3 tiny O-rings. A phone is riddled with holes – it has a power socket, a data connector, a mic, a speaker, and other such nonsense that is not intended to be used in high humidity, let alone get soaking wet.
The fact that cellphones often survive immersion, like M Scott’s wife’s phone there, says they’re more moisture-resistant than we have any right to expect. But you want one you can take in the steam room with you and it not croak, you’re gonna pay for the privilege…
This is done for a reason. If you really did drop your whole phone say into a puddle or a bucket of water or the lake then most often damage is caused by a short circuit. Now if you have a safety mechanism that immediately cuts power as soon as it gets wet before a short can happen then your phone may be salvaged. Now beyond that there is also the possibility of a batter overheating and starting on fire due to a short and yes a batter can start on fire underwater.
So you’re saying that you should be able to introduce moisture into an electronic device and expect either (a) the manufacturer to replace it or (b) said device to still work?
Try dumping ‘just a little’ water into the back of your tv, then tell me how good it works and how quickly the manufacturer was to replace it.
Good god people grow up already….take care of your crap, don’t ruin it, and it will be just fine. Goddamn whiners!
I would not blame the US cell phone industry – Americans were dumb enough to fall into the marketing trap of “free” phones with contract. 😀
In China people just buy whatever phone they want and use their old number (sim card) or get a new one. You can buy credits or move it to a monthly account. What could be easier?
Spare cell phone batteries are very cheap (about $10-15) as they are not sold through all the Radio Shacks, Best Buy’s and so on. Selling batteries is what makes money for these stores.
Radio Shack especially! All Radio Shack stores track and set monthly battery sales budgets. If any store or employee fails to meet their battery sales quota there is hell to pay! Every month there are award certificates for sales and there is a battery category. So next time you go into a Radio Shack see if you don’t get offered batteries. 😉
Cheers
Bullcrap !!! It must be a scam.
Why put a piece of paper over a disabling feature? Apparently this two contacts are insulated when covered. They are also part of a sealed unit. While getting batteries wet is not recommended, it should be the circuits that are more in danger of water contact instead of the battery. Yet, if this is a design feature, then where is the warranty that this disabling feature will fail before any of the circuits get wet.
If water is able to enter the battery then it wouldn’t matter if the battery was shorted or not. It is the battery contents (lithium) that are the problem. Not the electrical discharge.
Moisture is a common occurrence in the real world. The phone should be robust enough to tolerate any expected amount of contact with moisture. That includes being in a pocket with the user sweating profusely or having coffee spilled on it. This differentiates it from the “back of a TV” which is not expected to ever see moisture or totally immersing it in water. And yes, I would expect a laptop to be at least equally moisture resistant.
Fusion, don’t be an idiot.
That strip, as bs and MacBandit pointed out, is a safety device, not part of a “scam”.
You’re wrong, boyo. Unacceptable moisture levels reach it well before penetrating into the phone’s innards. It disables the battery, thereby preventing the phone from receiving power while there is presumably a high enough level of moisture in it to destroy the phone, were power applied.
When the strip dries out sufficiently to restore battery function, the phone can safely be presumed to be dry as well, and therefore can once again be safely powered up.
Far from being a scam, it’s a very cheap, simple, reliable and elegant way to prevent inadvertent destruction of a phone, and the attendant replacement cost to the owner. The goddamn thing is there to PROTECT your investment – not turn it into a brick.
I can tell you’ve never been involved in designing electronic equipment, ace. I have, and I have to admire what is a very cheap, simple and effective way to protect the instrument from destruction by the most likely hazard. Quite ingenious. Wish I had thought of it, in fact. 😉
It still smacks of a total lack of understanding the real world.
I would rather buy a good phone that didn’t to tango-uniform at the sight of water, rather than some cheap phone that did. O rings and the like are not new inventions, and if you want to make money Lauren – design a headphone and charger jack that can survive a quick dunking (inductive pickup + ac-dc converter , bluetooth?).
The price of the phone warrants good design; these things retail for $100+, and often much much much more.
#25, Lauren,
I think you missed a few of the most critical issues on this.
There is no publicized “fix” by the cell phone makers about this little “safety” feature. This is their way of voiding a warranty that might have just gone through normal usage. (caught in rain, excess sweating, spilled liquid, etc)
There is no guarantee or even expectation that the “safety” feature would trip before damage is caused to any circuit. Moisture would have to reach this “safety” feature before any other part of the phone internals.
As others (especially #26 point out) “O” rings and gaskets are not new. I can’t think of any consumer product that does not have some degree of moisture resistance. I don’t know how many times my 40 yr old Seiko got dunked, my Olympus C4000 has been rained on and splashed a few times, and my keyboard has more coffee stains than imaginable. Yet they all still work well and are still in use (except my kid got me a new watch for Christmas).
Sheet, my ancient Canon TX has seen more moisture abuse then I care to admit to and yet I know it would work fine with a fresh roll of film. So would all those lenses.
No, I don’t design products. I used to test them and find their limits though. I am well aware of reliability, maintainability, MTBF, Design of Experiment, Pareto Analysis, Failure Analysis, and any number of other testing parameters, regulatory and industry testing standards, and basic engineering principles. No, I didn’t write any books but I have done several training manuals.
Yet I won’t stand upon my experience to suggest you don’t know what you talk about. I have no idea what type of products you “designed”, but I am reasonably certain they weren’t consumer products. This design suggests it protects the manufacturer more than it does the battery or phone.
I have first hand experience with these moisture stickers in cell batteries and Cingular. My girlfriends cell battery had stopped holding a charge, and turning off after about 6 months of use. No rain exposure, no shower exposure, no toilet or sink exposure. She had purchased the additional insurance policy on the phone plan in case anything did happen to the phone, but when we took it in to a Cingular store for service we were flatly told that they wouldn’t even look at it because the sticker had been activated, and that it was company policy to do so and she would have to shell out a minimum of another $100 for a reburbished version of her basic model phone(free with subscription model type). The rep even admitted that it may have simply changed color from being in a humid environment such as a few humid days of weather that may have cumulatively activated the sticker, that it didn’t need to be dunked in water or drenched in rain for it to happen. But it didn’t matter, we were screwed and they wouldn’t even check if it was the battery that was the problem or the phone malfunctioning in some way. This is definitely a protection for the companies and not the end-user.
It may – or may not – be perfected yet, or used as intended… it may be insufficiently mature to be relied upon for warranty purposes… and I don’t doubt for a minute that greedy bastards may be using it as an excuse to push phone sales… but there’s always ways to deal with such things.
Now being aware of this, if I took my phone in on a warranty claim, I would simply remove the battery and tell them that I’ve been scared of batteries since one blew up on me, so I only use the phone when plugged into the power cord in the car. Let ’em try to get around the absence of a battery to examine.
Anyway, I never said cellphones are perfect – some have excellent track records and others drop like flies – notably the ones you start seeing a few months after their intro being sold at bargain prices, with “refurbished” mentioned in the fine print…
I’ve been carrying a phone for about 12 years now, and I’ve been caught in the rain, sweated like the proverbial pig, spilled drinks, etc, etc… and the only phone that’s gone south on me has been a Moto flip that put it’s legs in the air after a few raindrops on the keypad, which is obviously unacceptable.
Still, a steamy bathroom, dropping it in the toilet, whatever – immersion, period – is not something you have any right to have a cellphone survive. They often do anyway, so quitcherbitchin.
If they designed and built waterproof phones for the lazy sheeple who unreasonablly expect perfection and 100% reliability under all circumstances, at all times, including the abuse they dish out from carelessness and dimbulb acts – they can do that too. But we’ll ALL pay a lot more for that extra reliability that’s demanded by a small minority. As usual, lazy, careless Americans demand their cake and to eat it too – and for everyone else to pick up the check!
Pffft.
and chris – it was your mistake in going to Cingular with the phone and not insisting that they try the phone with a known-good battery. It is in no way an unreasonable request, and I would think it should’ve been obvious. If the personnel at the store refused to do so, a phone call to a supervisor in support would’ve gotten you a concession. They always make it policy to try to turn down users at the first support level, like at the retail counter, but rarely do you have to do much more than make that small extra effort that most people don’t – and which the company knows they won’t, which is why you really don’t have to twist their arm that hard, since so few bother to.