Drop your phone in the drink? There may be a solution

With summer in full swing and Boundary County residents gravitating toward the rivers, lakes and swimming pools, it’s inevitable that a cell phone or two will end up in the water.

But don’t throw it away just yet.

TCC Verizon Wireless in Ponderay at 477100 N. Hwy 95 may be able to bring your phone back from the dead. Using a new drying technology called Redux, moisture is removed from wet cell phones and the devices returned to working condition. The revive process has been successful in recovering devices damaged by many perils, including the toilet, pool, washing machine, mud, beer, wine and more. Pricing for the successful recovery of a device is $50 for a basic phone or a data device and $90 for a smartphone, in addition to a $10 diagnostic fee. Additional phone insurance providers will offer lower pricing for a successful recovery of a device.

“Everyone thinks their phone is fried when it gets wet, and that just simply isn’t the case,” said Reuben Zielinski, co-founder of Redux in a release. “This new technology will remove 100 percent of the moisture from wet electronics, allowing many mobile device users to recover their hardware investment and precious data.”

To ensure a successful revive of your sarurated phone, TCC recommends not plugging the device in, turning it off immediately, remove the battery if at all possible and head for the TCC store. The process typically takes less than an hour, and if successful, the phone will maintain its existing life expectancy. TCC Redux Development Manager James Shrake said the process is successful with nine out of 10 phones that are brought in.

“Usually the device will come right back, and it’s as if the issues never happened,” Shrake said. “It saves customers money by eliminating the cost to replace the devices.”

The Redux machine is basically a chamber, according to Shrake. Within the chamber, the air pressure is dropped, which lowers the boiling point of water. This effectively vaporizes any and all moisture in the device.

“As soon as we know all the moisture is gone, we apply about a 10-minute charge to the device,” Shrake said. “After that, the machine opens up, and we review the conditions of the phone before applying any charge to the customer. We also have tablet dryers, which we are starting to regionalize around the country. If you go to our website, redux.com, it will give you a list of dryers that can be found in a given area.”

Madison Simmet, manager of TCC Verizon Wireless in Ponderay, said the store has had the Redux system for a couple of months, and so far has been able to save a number of phones, including her own.

“We successfully revived one customer’s basic phone, which went through an entire washing machine cycle,” Simmet said. “That was pretty awesome. I personally had to use it on my phone, which took a toilet plunge, and was brought back. The key for the best chance at revival is for customers not to plug their phones in, power it off and don’t wait a couple of weeks before bring it in. It’s an awesome system, and I know that personally, and this was after plugging it in and basically doing everything I shouldn’t have done with it. So I know it works.”

According to the Redux website, Redux was inspired when co-founder Joel Trusty’s wife subjected her cell phone to a full cycle in the washing machine and was devastated that not only was the phone ruined, but all the data, contact information, photos and videos were lost.

With a background in manufacturing, Trusty had an idea for how to save his wife’s phone and knew that his friend and neighbor, Zielinski, an ex-IBM employee, had the equipment to put his idea into practice.

Together, they fixed the phone, and within one week created the first Redux model.