I Can Clean My Phone With Water
So. This morning, my Galaxy S8+ fell out of my grasp and into a rather dusty corner of the floor of my house.
I’m bad at keeping my floors non-dusty sometimes.
My tech-device-cleaning instincts kicked in. I carefully blew the dust particles away with some air. I used a special lens-cleaning wipe to carefully clean all the surfaces.
But I still had some annoying particles in some tiny areas I couldn’t quite get to. And then I found this official video from Samsung.
Oh right.
This thing is water resistant.
I rinsed it off. I wiped it clean. All good.
And then a long-lived part of my brain slowly melted.
I was born in 1984. At least 8 percent of my life since then has revolved around trying not to get water inside of electronics. This is the age of information. Devices are everywhere. I can’t walk 10 feet without tripping over a laptop or a smart phone.
The maxim burned into my brain over and over again: Electronics and water don’t mix.
It’s common sense. It’s scientific knowledge. And it’s still mostly true…at least if that device doesn’t have a magical water-shielding case around it. Plus, standards and designs are getting better all the time, so “water resistant” means a lot more today than it did 20 years ago.
I know that water resistant phones and devices aren’t a new thing at all. But I never owned one until this year.
It was a truly amazing moment to gently rinse my phone with water as a tiny part of my brain screamed at me that I was breaking it. If you own a water-resistant device and haven’t yet gently rinsed it under your tap, I highly recommend it!
