Dirty secrets: 12 strange and disturbing phone facts
Your smartphone. You touch it all the time, and keep it close when you’re not holding it. It’s probably your constant companion and, when you factor in the cost of wireless plans, the most expensive piece of electronics you own.
It is also a teeming pit of filth and despair.
We surveyed the leading repair shops and refurbishers of iPhones and Android handsets to find out what happens to phones out there in the real world (your pocket or purse), how frequently they break, and how to fix them.
What we learned was revolting. Trust us, you will never look at your phone the same way again.
1. Your phone is filled with crud.
You never know what you’ll find when you pop the cover of an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, but you know it won’t be pretty. The repair shops we contacted report a wide range of effluvia inside, including metal shavings, construction dust, tobacco leaves, and “what can only be described as green slime,” says Oz Rahman, VP of quality assurance at Batteries Plus Bulbs.
Fixing phones is clearly not a job for the faint of stomach.
“The most horrifically common and disgusting thing our repair team deals with are finger oils and food caking in around the home button,” says AJ Forsythe, CEO of iCracked, an onsite repair and buyback service.
“It is absolutely the grossest thing to clean as these things do not tend to fall out — ever — thanks to Apple’s very secure design.”
2. It's also dirtier than a subway toilet.
And not by just a little. Mobile phones have 18 times more bacteria per square inch than your average toilet seat, according to researchers in Turkey. A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that the surface of one in six handsets contained — how do we put this delicately? — fecal matter.
And you thought your phone service was crap. (Ba-dum-bum. Thank you; we’ll be here all week.)
Microbes can survive on the surface of your phone for several days and may spread from person to person, say researchers at Stanford. You can keep your screen clean by using antibacterial wipes like ZAGG’s, or a device like the PhoneSoap Charger, which uses UV light to sanitise the phone while it’s plugged in.
Also: Wash your hands after you use the loo. Seriously.
3. Pocket lint is not your friend.
The No. 1 cause of failure for charging ports and headphone jacks? Pocket lint, say several of the repair shops we contacted.
“Lint is a horrible conductor that can slow down charging or block it entirely,” says iCracked’s Forsythe.
“And it doesn’t move when you blow into the port — in fact, that just forces the lint in even further.”
However, you can remove the lint from a headphone jack using a Q-tip and a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol, he adds. The charging port is trickier — you may need to open the case and reseat the power connector, a task better left to a pro.
If you don’t already have covers for your charging port and headphone jack, you can buy them for a few bucks. You might also consider cleaning out your pockets once in a while. Just a thought.
4. Watch out for headphones, Jack.
While lint also can wreak havoc with headphone jacks, far more damage is done by people who keep their headphones always plugged in, says Alyssa Voorhis, senior tech analyst for Gazelle, a buyer and seller of used phones.
“The stress of bumps and jolts to the plugged-in headphones in the jack can arc the contacts of the connector and eventually break the solder,” she says.
“So while lint is a temporary obstacle, a stressed jack leads to actual failure.”
5. Your car's cupholder is a secret phone killer.
You’ve just exited the drive-through at Mickey D’s, wolfed down a Royale With Cheese, and finished a frosty and delicious shake. You toss the container and drop your phone into the cupholder where the drink used to be. Then, for no apparent reason, your handset stops working.
Congratulations — you just dropped your phone into a puddle of water left over from that ice-cold drink, says Gene Musser, director of RadioShack’s Fix It Here! program.
“The charge port on the bottom of your phone can be an Achilles’ heel,” he says.
“The condensation from your drink will wick onto the copper contacts of the charge port and cause water damage.”
The solution: Find a better place to stash your phone while you drive. Or ask for extra napkins.
6. Lipstick traces on your phone? Not pretty.
Does your phone suddenly sound muffled? Blame your face powder.
“We are always finding iPhones clogged with makeup,” Forsythe says.
“Unlike other materials, makeup tends to stick around, making it hell on the speakers.”
This problem was more common when people carried BlackBerry devices, says Gazelle’s Voorhis.
“Makeup rarely has the opportunity to gunk up speakers because the number of people who apply makeup to their ears is relatively small,” she says drolly.
“However, pancake or powder will find its way into the crevices of a physical QWERTY keyboard held to your face.”
7. You can't dry a wet phone by sticking it in rice. Sorry.
You’ve just dropped your phone into the toilet. So you pop it in a box of Uncle Ben’s Instant and hope for the best.
Rice try. The idea that you can magically dry out your phone by burying it in a baggie of basmati is just a myth, says iCracked’s Forsythe.
“The damage doesn’t happen because the water is jangling around inside the phone, it happens when water shorts out the internal circuits,” he says.
Worse, even if your phone recovers from its bath, grains of rice can lodge in the headphone jack or charge port, says iDropped CEO Charles Hibble. When your phone goes for a quick dip, your best option is to power down, unplug it from any power source, dry it off, and repower it, he says. If it’s been fully submerged for more than a few seconds, though, odds are it will need professional attention.
Next time, get a waterproof phone case and save the rice for your sushi.
8. Many phones bend; others just shatter.
The “Bendgate” scandal that affected some iPhone 6 Plus models following its debut isn’t especially unusual. Pretty much any large phone with an aluminum frame will bend under the right conditions, Forsythe says. That includes the iPhone 5, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus.
Once a phone gets bent, it’s hard to fully unbend, he adds, but it may still be usable. The bigger issue is whether the logic board screwed to the phone’s frame has been damaged. If so, you may need to replace both it and the frame.
Large phones that use plastic housings, like the Samsung Galaxy Note series, don’t bend, adds Mark Bowles, co-founder of ecoATM, a buyer and seller of used phones. But they will break, leading to cracked plastic and shattered screens. Suddenly a bent phone doesn’t sound so bad.
9. Your phone is literally buggy.
You know how inside every hot dog there’s a small but unnerving number of bug parts? The same may be true of your phone.
Why? Because it’s nice and warm in there, says RadioShack’s Musser. Tiny mites crawl in through the headphone jack or charging port and curl up for a nap.
They won’t hurt the phone, just like eating a hot dog lightly seasoned with cockroach antennae won’t kill you (at least, not right away). But if it’s something that, well, bugs you, you can buy an insect-shaped dust plug for your headphone jack and charge port.
10. And possibly a puppy potty.
One in 10 pet owners say their furry friends damaged their gadgets, and about a third of those were smartphones, according to a survey by SquareTrade, the protection plan specialists.
The vast majority of damage was caused by puppies seeking more attention from their owners, and involved gnawed phones, chewed cables, and worse. One in six pet owners reported that their four-legged companions used the phone to (ahem) mark their territory.
“Pet damage is one of the most common problems we see in our repair shop network,” says Jessica Hoffman, global head of communications for SquareTrade.
“And, yes, that includes vomiting and peeing on the devices.”
11. Every phone has a weakness.
The perfect handset has yet to be invented, and each has its own inherent flaws.
Samsung phones are famous for failed charge ports and power buttons, says SquareTrade’s Hoffman, while common iPhone issues include trouble-prone home and power buttons, and faulty batteries. EcoATM’s Bowles says both Apple and Samsung models tend to crack near their charging ports. iDropped’s Hibble says power button failures are both the most common and the most difficult to fix.
SquareTrade's repair shops report that the most expensive repairs are cracked screens — and the larger the screen, the more they tend to cost, Hoffman says. And Samsung handsets are more expensive to repair, because parts aren’t as readily available.
And some things can’t be fixed at all, Forsythe says.
“The iPhone’s Touch ID cable is totally impossible to fix or replace,” he says, “and it’s very easy to damage it if you open the phone’s case incorrectly. It won’t break your phone, but Touch ID will no longer work. This is an instance where you definitely want a professional who has the right tools.”
12. Baby slobber = liquid disaster.
Given the lint, slime, bug parts, human waste, and puppy urine associated with smartphones, letting your rug rat use one as a teething ring is probably ill-advised. But baby slobber is not only bad for your future family scion, it’s also bad for your phone, claims the crack repair team at iCracked.
“For some reason, baby spit will immediately short out the charging port on an iPhone,” Forsythe says.
“The scientific basis for this is as yet unknown, but babies are buckets of random meta-biological and disease-related stuff that makes them particularly weird.”
Note: Yahoo Tech has not confirmed this in testing with actual babies. Your droolage may vary.
News break – November 21
