Acid dribble
I dismantled a Sony Ericsson phone recently, with the intention of repairing the keypad after my niece had chewed it a little. (She’s a year old, it’s the only way she can comment on build quality…) Expecting a little bit of dampness, I was horrified to find that the internals had turned to a kind of grey/green soup. Absolutely no hope of rescue – the phone is now on its way to the recyclers.
A few months ago I was repairing another mobile device and had to spend a while cleaning the fluff out of the inside. It’s an iPod Touch. There’s only one button, and it’s sealed. Even the speaker hole has a covering. So how did the fluff get in? Pure mystery.
Two weeks ago I had to dig tons of lint out of a docking connector, but at least there’s an explanation (since the device probably spends a lot of time in a pocket, and the connector is on the outside).
But seriously… I’ve repaired many devices over the years, and no matter how well sealed they are, there’s always a lot of $#1[ inside. Maybe this is macro-scale evidence of quantum tunnelling?