:‘(

Dropped my Nexus S in the toilet last night and the reality of the situation is finally setting in, maybe writing about it would be therapeutic. You mind?

So I had my precious second Google phone just perfect, in fact two hours before the incident I finally found an OC/UV kernel that stayed stable at 1.4GHz. Wrapping up a good week of heavy work to try to pay a bunch of bills that snuck up on me, feeling good, in the bathroom, reading an article on tmonews about how T-Mobile customer service reps are really getting their balls broken hard apparently as a result of the impending buyout, morale down, people getting fired, really got their balls in a vice, poor guys and gals, that in general for them (and as well as customers) sucks (that’s kind of a hangout for T-Mo employees, good place), finish my business (no no, the toilet had been flushed, I flushed it, relax), woops, phone’s in the toilet. Woops.

Not the F word yet, figured if I snatch it fast and cut the power until it dried, a little non-salinized water never hurt anybody.

Without hesitation my hand dives in to retrieve it, pop the battery, shake it hard in the shower for a little centrifugal help, holler at the wife to bust out the hair dryer, blast that sucker for what felt like an adequate amount of time, cooled it down in the freezer, let it simmer, started to power it up but heard a sizzling sound, you know, kind of like a little water boiling across a cell phone circuit of some sort, more hair dryer, freezer, fire it up again, sort of boots but now the screen’s bugging out.

Skipping forward an hour, the phone boots, screen not bugging out as much as if to suggest that I might make it out of this alive, repeat that for another half hour, screen mellows out and boots fine, now I’m at the lockscreen and see that it, while picking up wifi, is not connecting cellularly. Is it the sim? Swap sims with my wife, same problem. Remove the sim, compare it to hers without a sim, she gets a no sim notice but some bars anyway but I don’t get a no sim thing but no bars, no service, as if the water just surgically targeted the part of that radio chip that connects to the towers. Pop the battery to begin a hard resetting adventure, I see that little water-detecting white strip no longer white but the you’re-now-officially-screwed red color.

Damn. F word actually.

My wife, a real sweetheart, arguably too good for me, comforts me saying I can use her Nexus S and she’ll get some cheapo tomorrow (today). While touching, it’s just too important to me to keep her on the Google Nexus train to take her up on that. You know what I mean?

Take an extra sleeping pill, hit the sack hoping the phone would surprise me by working tomorrow. Wake up, bam it hits me, what happened last night, fire up the phone with such hope, nope, no connection. Start downloading and flashing different radio firmware, nothing, beginning to accept that this phone is now wifi-only, start backing up all my stuff to my computer.

Luckily, I never ebayed my old AT&T HTC Nexus One. I like that phone, though the screen compared to the Samsung isn’t much to write home about, really you can’t see it outside unless you sort of cup your hand over it to create shade. So right now maybe you’re thinking, stop crying douchebag, you’ve still got that phone and you don’t even go outside much anyway and when you do go outside maybe it’s time to stop being one of those dicks who’s using his phone while walking down crowded streets and subway platforms, fire up SIP calling on the Nexus S.

Yeah, all right, I can sweat it out until the next Nexus maybe, but EDGE? It’s AT&T and I’m T-Mobile, and today at least, there’s a distinction. Specificallollolly from T-Mo’s 3G speeds that for me have broken 6mbps / 40ms ping (yes, 3G, not 4G) to what, like 120Kbps? Actually I just got 221kbps, I guess that’s okay. Certainly a step up from AT&T’s NYC network of any G. Could also save me a little juice I suppose.

All right so I can either ebay myself another Nexus S .. let’s see how much that would run me .. ouch, like $400, no dice. Other option, suck it up and use the AT&T Nexus on EDGE, keep it on wifi hotspot mode, tether the Nexus S to it, life goes on (though a lot slower), wait it out until the next Nexus hits. I should try my luck calling T-Mobile CSR and begging them to cut me some slack but if they’re anything like AT&T like that tmonews article claims the deal will be broken when I say “red.” Another option, Google around for cellphone repair but that just sounds like a longshot for this particular problem.

Everything that wasn’t working after the toilet incident with exception to the cellular is working on the Nexus S including the screen. God’s teasing me, giving me back everything that failed one by one except for this. I’d feel like I’d have more closure today if the screen just went black after the toilet rather than bugging out and then getting better later in the night. I still haven’t brought myself to switch the sim.

What do? Appeal to the T-Mobile twitter guys who really dug this article I wrote? Fellas, if you spot me a new Nexus in spite of the red strip I will show my appreciation with my awesome writing, like I did with HTC not once but twice over something relatively minor. T-Mobile, you guys hook me up, damn right I’ll love you longtime.

That’s it I’m done.

Doug Simmons