n8s blog

My wife’s iPhone started having some issues about a month ago. It started with the WiFi not working. When settings was open, the WiFi button would be grayed and it would say “No WiFi Available”.

Next the clock started having a mind of its own. Sometimes it would be right on the button, sometimes 15 minutes slow, sometimes hours slow.

And finally, calls started coming thru about 75% of the time. Texts would come through immediately about 25% of the time, with the other 75% taking hours or days to come through.

Although it is possible to live with a phone acting like this, it is far from ideal. So I took it down to our friendly Apple store for replacement.

The Apple “Genius” took a look at it and tried all the standard reset stuff (which I had already tried), but to no avail. He then checked the “water damage sensors”, and found that both sensors had been set off.

I asked what could have caused that, and he said it would have had to be dunked in water. Well, I know that didn’t happen, so I asked about rain drops. He said that is very unlikely. Then I asked about our 1 year old son.

My wife and I have given the cell phone to my son to play with while music is playing, or a child’s app is on the screen. During the “everything goes in mouth” stage, he would occasionally taste it to see how it would work.

The “genius” smiled and said, “That is what did it! I see that all the time. You have no idea how much I see that! Parents give them to their children, the child pops it in their mouth, sensors go off and water damage can occur.”

Turns out that Apple just recently started replacing phones with water damage for $199. So instead of paying the close to $500 retail value of the phone, you can get it replaced for the AT&T discounted price of $199.