answer. Website design By BotEap.comThe results were reassuring, if not astonishing. The bottom line: Alaskan residents may suffer from some screen issues or short-lived batteries on cold days, but nothing that a warm room can’t cure. And if our phone can withstand repeated baths in one of the coldest liquids in the world, yours can surely survive a day on the slopes without worry.
Can you freeze your phone?
Website design By BotEap.comExactly how cold can a phone get before it stops working? For help, I called our friends at Environ Laboratories, an environmental testing facility in Minneapolis used by the defense, aerospace and technology industries to simulate extreme conditions. We have Environ a sample of six phones from various manufacturers. The entry-level models were the type of entry-level phones that service providers often give away for free with new contracts; none were billed as “hardened” or designed to withstand extreme temperatures. Environ’s job was to freeze the devices in a temperature-controlled chamber (lowest possible setting: minus 100 F) until all six phones stopped working, no matter how cold that required.
Website design By BotEap.comIn other words, we decided to push these phones beyond the limits of their design parameters and warranties.
Website design By BotEap.comStarting at 40 F (the equivalent of a cool fall afternoon in New England), we let each phone run for 30 minutes before lowering the temperature by 10 degrees. We repeated this incremental temperature drop every half hour until the phones stopped working. Once a phone shuts down, we give it one last bit of mercy by bringing it back to room temperature to see if the heat can revive it.
Website design By BotEap.comOther than minor hiccups (slight screen dimming, slow key response), neither phone had any real issues until minus 10 F, when the low battery indicator appeared on a Samsung, even though it had recently been charged. . At minus 20, the same phone was turned off (plugging it in and quickly turning it on brought it back to life), and the screens on some of the other phones were hard to read. Bottom Thirty is where the real fun started, with five of the six phones experiencing serious battery or LCD issues: One Nokia’s screen turned into an unreadable blue block, while strange bars contaminated another phone’s screen. Another 10 degrees, down to minus 40, and all but one of the phones were inoperable. The last phone standing, an old Motorola Krzr owned by a PM staff member, actually stayed functional until about minus 55 F, when the battery ran out. Surprisingly, none of the damage appeared to be permanent; all it took was a return to room temperature to bring all the phones back to life. Still, we’re electronic sadists, and we weren’t going to let our access to Environ’s environmental testing facility, and its liquid nitrogen vats, go to waste.
Website design By BotEap.comSure, the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth was minus 12.6 F (and the Continental US has never dropped below minus 70), but we couldn’t resist finding out how our toughest competitor could handle a dunk in a cube of liquid of minus 314.7 F nitrogen. Surprisingly, the Motorola phone survived multiple drops in coolant and the sub-sub-sub-zero baths caused the battery to shut down, but once the phone warmed up, it came back to life with no visible damage. We even dropped the frozen phone to the ground from hip height. And although we expected it to shatter, the fall caused little damage. In fact, it wasn’t until we dipped the Krzr into liquid nitrogen four times, and then forcibly dropped it to the ground, that it finally stopped. Even then, the screen was still on when the phone was plugged in (although it was unreadable) and surprisingly the audio was still working. Some keys even seemed to produce a
answer. Website design By BotEap.comThe results were reassuring, if not astonishing. The bottom line: Alaskan residents may suffer from some screen issues or short-lived batteries on cold days, but nothing that a warm room can’t cure. And if our phone can withstand repeated baths in one of the coldest liquids in the world, yours can surely survive a day on the slopes without worry.
answer. Website design By BotEap.comThe results were reassuring, if not astonishing. The bottom line: Alaskan residents may suffer from some screen issues or short-lived batteries on cold days, but nothing that a warm room can’t cure. And if our phone can withstand repeated baths in one of the coldest liquids in the world, yours can surely survive a day on the slopes without worry.