What Happened to Your Phones in 2016?

Cell Phone, Data Recovery, General Info

FlashFixers recovered more data from mobile phones in 2016 than ever before! How did these phones end up at FlashFixers data recovery lab? From the most common culprits to the most unique, this blog post shares what happened to your phones in 2016.

Water Damage Affected Every 2 of 3 Phones

Water damage continues to be responsible for most of the phones that we service. Every 2 out of 3 phones had some kind of water damage!

But water damage to a phone doesn’t always mean damaged by water. Sometimes, water damage is used as a broad term to refer to phones that have been damaged by any liquid.

This year’s liquid damaged phones also included phones that had been damaged by: coffee, soda, coke, apple juice, milk, melted ice cream, sweat, sewers, and porta potties.

Many phones were not submerged for very long, or even at all. Sometimes a splash of pool water, condensation from a water bottle, or sweat from a long run was all it took to start causing problems.

On the flip side, the longest amount of time that a phone had been submerged was 1 month at the bottom of a lake. And can you guess the longest amount of time that a phone had been left in a toilet? 2 hours.

How Did the Water Damage Happen?

Nearly half (48%) of all water damaged phones received had been exposed to water at a pool, ocean, lake, or river. In many of these cases, people had forgotten that they had a phone in their pocket.

Not only can checking pockets save phones from swimming accidents, but it can also save phones from the laundry. Nearly 1 out of every 10 water damaged phones (9%) had found its way to the washing machine. Many times, these phones were washed and rinsed for a full cycle.

A significant portion of water damaged phones (16%) found their demise in the toilet or porta potty. Some skipped the in between steps and went straight for the sewer.

A small portion of water damaged phones (7%) came to FlashFixers data recovery lab due to a failed waterproof case.

Less common causes of water damaged phones that we received included: rain, puddles, sprinklers, sink, tub, and hot tub.

What About Phones Not Affected by Water Damage?

Half (50%) of all other phones received had suddenly stopped working. This is a broad category that encompasses many issues, the results of which can be summed up in one sentence: the phone just didn’t work. In most of these cases, the phones had turned off and would not power on, or reset, or show up when plugged into a computer. Other times, the phone didn’t respond to touch or only showed emergency service.

More than a quarter (26%) of all other phones was physically broken. These phones were bent, with shattered screens, and sometimes in pieces. A few phones had been run over by cars, and one phone had been run over by a lawnmower. But most of these phones had been dropped from a height range of a few feet to a few stories.

Other common issues affecting mobile phones were boot loop (12%), deleted data (8%), and passcode locked (5%).

Some of Our Favorite Successful Data Recovery Cases of 2016

Run-Over-By-A-Lawnmower phone was lucky. The lawnmower blade cut into the phone’s screen and completely exposed the logic board. The blade narrowly missed the phone’s memory chip where all of the data was stored, and as a result, all data was recovered.

1-Month-Under-5-Feet-of-Lake-Water phone was a challenging case. This phone had been dropped in a lake during high rains. It was found a month later after the water had receded. The phone had been completely saturated with mud, but after a thorough cleaning, became another successful data recovery.

Fell-Off-A-Car-And-Run-Over-Twice phone was severely bent and had one of the worst shattered screens we have ever seen. Despite the obvious physical damage, we were able to get the phone’s logic board working again to access the phone’s data.

Looking Forward to a New Year

Thank you to all of our clients for trusting us to recover their data this year and always. We look forward to helping even more people get their data back in 2017.

Did you know that mobile phone data recovery is only part of what we do? More than 40% of our data recovery cases in 2016 were from hard drives, USB flash drives, memory cards, and other media types. Visit www.FlashFixers.com to learn more about what we do!