What’s a “Damage Dot”, you ask? It’s (usually) a pencil eraser sized dot placed inside your mobile device (typically a cellphone) to detect water damage. Sometimes there’s two. One near the battery compartment and one inside the actual device. Go ahead, check your mobile. If it’s new enough, and you are in the US (not sure about other regions), you’ll probably have one.

The dots change from one color to another upon sufficient water exposure. Typically this is either from white, to pink or red. Note: Sometimes there is pink lettering or markings to begin with. This gives the repair folks an easy way to tell whether or not a device has been otherwise “dropped in the drink”, so to speak.

Anyways, to the crux of the post … an article I was reading recently claims that some users have (reportedly) been denied warranties here in the US because these dots have reportedly been “tripped” by incidental exposure to “steam, sweat, extreme humidity, or condensation resulting from abrupt temperature change”.

So … check your dot, in case you experience problems down the road that would cause you to invoke the warranty, and then later be denied warranty coverage due to a faulty water damage indication. If your dot is white, and not entirely red or pink you should be all set (indicating no water damage). If it’s completely red or pink, then it’s been tripped. If you can’t locate a dot, then chances are your device either does not have one, or it could be hidden inside the device itself.

P.S. I can verify Verizon has implemented damage dots on newer devices. It’s a white dot with interlaced red markings inside my VX8500 (Chocolate), for instance.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.