I Was Given A Bag Of Melting Phones | Fixing Melting Rubber 

_"The solution - alcohol, and a lot of it."_ You're absolutely right. Once you drink a bottle or two of whiskey - you don't care about how sticky your phone is anymore.

Melting rubber is the single grossest thing I've gone through with my eletronics devices, I can't tell you how many times I had to strip and scrap perfectly functional products just because it was easier to do so

I found a better way to clean it! It's not rubber, and this problem isn't limited to older devices. This coating is called Soft-Touch, and for the first year or a few (depending on the quality) it is very pleasant to the touch, but then gradually it becomes more and more sticky, and eventually turns into this. That's why everything is fine on HTC devices - it's rubber there. The Soft-Touch coating is washed off very easily: just immerse the case without electronics (!!!) in 647 solvent (it is used to dissolve paints and varnishes, just what you need). But keep in mind, some types of plastics after that become covered with a white coating (for example, some cases from Sony, while others are fine), but with most everything is fine. In my free time, I experiment with this coating and put it together to fix it. This one and painting with clear nail polish is already successful (it will take less time than your method), and I plan to try to cover it with different spray varnishes in cans (for example, now I plan to try acrylic on one mouse)

I can agree that old rubber is probably the worst thing to tuch and handle. A phone is bad enough, but if you have an older VW, they have the same problem with their "soft tuch" material as yet again is just a rubber coating over plastic and thru time it just gets all sticky and collects dirt on the surface

I think the melting of the rubber is caused by an softening agent mixed into it. The amount of things usings those back in the early to mid 2000s is astounding. I have found similar sticky residue on all things from snockeling gear to USB-Sticks. Fortunatly coating using this softener isn't used commonly anymore.

Mrmobile covered this during “When Phones Were Fun” series. Basically, rubber reversion/devulcanization is a problem with old phones that use rubber coating as part of their body. They sure made the phone feel comfortable to hold while new but it becomes gross when the rubber degrades.

That soft coating was on Totes umbrellas I bought in the USA about a decade ago and went the same way. I removed it with a Chux cloth and methylated sprits, that worked fine. A similar coating was used in the early 90s on the interiors of some Italian cars, Ferraris in particular. Control buttons, dash components and consoles. Specialists charge a small fortune to “restore” them. Probably lots of scrubbing with metho and a chuckle when they write the invoice.

Dankpods needs to see this

I can confirm these are sticking to everything I put them near! Thanks Hugh, you are very generous.

4:48 that glowing orange indicator light is cool, it blends in with the outer shell, almost like current under-display camera technology but for lights !

It’s like a time machine seeing all these phones from back then getting fixed. Well done once again Hugh!

As a business owner, cleaning rubber reverted devices are a pain but it's insanely satisfying. I once got a lot of older work phones for dirt cheap to repair and resell. This one Motorola ic502 on Nextel (bought by Sprint, dissolved in 2013) had rubber so old it became pretty much water. It was a lot easier than the Nokias and Samsungs that I needed to clean, but it was a bit too easy for me.

I loved my Treo 680 and 750, the keyboard was easy to use. I used the Palm OS and interface instead of Windows. I had a similar issue with melting rubber on an old Lenovo external hard drive and used pro level fingernail polish to remove it. Also, if I remember correctly you could unscrew the end of the pen (the part that broke off) and there was a built-in reset pin.

We all already know this is gonna be a banger video. Keep up the good work hugh!!

This sort of thing is why I'm glad that rubber / soft touch coating trend died out. Strangely, a similar coating common on ThinkPads rarely ever gets this bad, maybe it uses a different material.

As a phone collector, yeah rubber coating can be annoying and nasty at the same time, this is why I clean my phones often when I get them or daily clean them

0:45 I have a HTC Touch Dual like this, and they charge using Mini USB cable. The connector on the phone is a little different but in fact is Mini USB

I've had this issue with a Powerbank of mine. Fixed the issue by using Sodium Bicarbonate and water, mixing them into a paste. Worked like a charm!

I use Bilt Hamber Surfex-HD, 5% mix. Tried it as a last resort before binning the item and found it works really well. It can take several attempts but the yucky stuff is easily scrapped off with the top of your finger nail, thus not damaging the surface. It has now saved several good usable items, including old phones, from going in the bin for being so gross to touch. I am in the UK and know Bilt Hamber is available in the US, not sure 'down there' :)

What a great video, hugh I love your videos been a big fan since a lot of time!! Best of luck

You can disassemble the shell and leave it overnight on a strong solvent like paint remover. Everything should easily come out after that. Another thing that I never seen anyone doing is refurbishing the battery. Most phone batteries have a hidden charging board inside them. You can remove that board and solder it on a new generic battery of similar or smaller physical size that operates on the same voltage range (Usually 3.7v~4.35v). Make a custom 3D printed case or be creative with casting materials like resin and voila! You have a brand new battery. You can even have a battery with more capacity than the original one depending on how much battery technology has improved when compared with the phone age.

I didn't have a Treo, but one of my first phones was a Palm Centro. The phone radio is separate from the actual power of the device because (unless you really need it powered fully off in which case you can just remove the battery) you have the ability to use it as a PDA without the radios on. Since they were designed for businesses, people still wanted access to calendars and cached emails if they had to disable the phone on a plane. Modern airplane modes are much more convenient

I have experienced this only once, as I never had a phone made with rubber, I dealt with this with the Gizmondo, an incredibly obscure handheld console from the early 2000s. It is definitely not a pleasant experience, it's really disgusting.

Hugh jeffery comes with the most unique videos you can ever find across RU-vid

WOW! I love old phone content. Enjoyed that Samsung SGH-i600. :)

This also happens to the analogue sticks on PS3 controllers. I have even encountered it on ink cartridges for those fancy pens. It's really difficult to get the rubber off your fingers after touching it. Hate that stuff.

I love how you keep it sweet and simple

I think there are 3 options re-using old electronic devices: 1.) repair if the same but new device would be still usable, e. g.: compatibility to standards like network, 2.) modify/upgrade add needed features if the repaired device could not be used, e. g.: incompatibility with todays standard like network (replace old parts with new parts, re-use replaced working parts for other projects), 3.) device crunching and raw material extracting.

I had an HTC neon in 2010. Seeing him triggered amazing memories, thanks!

This same rubberized stuff is applied to some hand tools as well, and they too become sticky and gross over time. As you stated - alcohol, and lots of it. Goo gone and WD-40 work fairly well too.

Dropping this here instead of inside a reply: I would take a wild guess at the problem being similar to PVC cables from old devices melting into the cases when left on top of them for years. It looks horrible, like the cable was near catching fire on top of it, but nope it just stayed there for years. What happens in that case is that the plasticizers that make the cable pliable migrate from it towards the harder case, softening it. A different effect happens with too old 3D printing filament, where it becomes brittle.

That HTC phone (first one) is actually the "HTC Touch" or "P3450". Sometimes "Elf" or "Vogue". Can use a standard mini USB to charge if the output is exact.

I have this issue with other electronics as well. Especially with my JuceBox video player from 2004. Hard to use that way. Same with removing it from its carrying case.

State of the art at one time. Crazy how far things have come.

It's going back to its origin, melting and seeping back into the ground. A million years from now someone will be pumping it back up and remarking that they hit a sweet pocket of Nokia rubberized phones.

I had a few rubberized pens. I kept one in the mailbox, as I get from time to time mail addressed to other people, and I find it handy to be able to write "not known, please return to sender" on the spot, so that I can put it in the post on my way to the office. Well, that's the only pen that didn't melt. So temperatures above 17C must be a factor. BTW I use alcohol and cotton pads, they don't leave marks, but it takes longer to get the goo out of the way.

HTC used a custom "extUSB" connector based on miniUSB (mini, not micro). Regular miniUSB cables will work just fine for charging. The charger that came with the phone was regular miniUSB too. Full ExtUSB was used for headsets.

I just did this to an old CRT I got from 1989. It was timely, but kinda fun to do

Cameras are also prone to this melting rubber coating situation; I used the same method of using methylated spirits to remove the coatings altogether. Many older style cameras have single-curve body contours which allowed flat sheets of materials to be stuck on for extra grip (even though some camera makers used equally perishable materials), but the rubber coating technique encouraged camera makers to go nuts with compound curves, which also means the resultant shiny smooth surfaces cannot be covered with suitable materials again.

YOOOOOOO THE 750!!! That was my first cellphone way back in 2011 and yeah same sticky situation, at the end I use rubbing alcohol and remove all the rubber coating

Hugh Jeffrey: hand on straight from the bag DankPods: gloves

One thing I would suggest, is that right after (I do mean it like right away) you clean some plastic stuff with alcohol, whatever form may it be (isopropyl, ethyl, any), clean it up with some LCD cleaner. Plastics don't react the best to alcohol, not like they'll get destroyed like acetone, but still they don't react too well. The wipe with LCD cleaner removes any alcohol residue and seems to stop the reaction. I've seen it on an optical drive I was cleaning up the front. Removing the sticker residue it had with alcohol worked great, but then the faded aspect stayed, which the LCD cleaning agent removed, completing the job. It looks like new now.

You can also use flour to remove the rubberized coating.

I know this is a bit late of a comment, but I found through a Google search that baking soda with a little bit of water to make a sort of dry paste worked. Although I haven't performed this fix on an electronic device, it did save a coat where the rubberized plastic buttons were melting and becoming sticky. No need to scrape the goo off.

I work on Dell Latitude laptops and I’m so glad Dell reduced the amount of rubber used in newer models

Transitioning from plastic/rubber to polycarbonate shell/ aluminium is still the best thing!

Also an issue on older car switch gear. The classic Ferrari sticky button problem. There are companies that specialise in refinishing them.

A treo 755p was my first smart phone and honestly Palm despite making every wrong decision was the real mvp

Melting rubber happens a lot in India for older devices, especially in the hot parts of the country. My mom's solution for that was to take off the battery and wipe it with a cloth dipped in kerosene and then drying it outside for hours in sun. Crude, but worked once on an old Motorola phone.

Those windows 2006 SE phones couldn't be switched of. I used a lot of PPCs and loved them

“A fellow aussie youtuber” for a moment i expected DankPods lol

Beware of isopropyl alcohol when cleaning old phones with keypads. On my Nokia, the keys fell off because the alcohol dissolved the plastic/rubber film that holds the buttons

You can use soda powder and water to remove the sticky plastic as well

This same phenomenon happens in some Mazda models from the mid 00s with their dashboards turning to gooo

I worked at AT&t when the treo 750 came out. Great device back then. Ah memories..

That Treo Pro was one of my favorite phones ever. Trep 800w was might favorite Windows phone of all time. I was a big Treo guy.

i hhad the same issue with my k800i sony and my p1i sony that i got from ebay were the plastic rubber was all melted. i managed to remove the sticky rubber via using a small pan and iPA with the parts fully dunked in for 30mins or longer and it came off really well. i also tried the scraping method but i found putting the parts in full cup of iPA worked very well.

Ooh! A nugget lucky dip! I'm glad nothing new is made out of rubber.

I would recommend having 3 solvents: alcohol, kerosene and acetone, where alcohol is the weakes and acetone is the stronges. If alcohol can't dissolve somehting - you switch to kerosene. In most cases it's safe to plactic, and easily removes "melted" rubber, duct tape residue etc. I had same issue, and removed it with kerosete and a piece of cloth. Acetone can dissolve most plastics, so should be used carefully.

I had to deal with this problem all the time back when I was restoring vintage camera lenses, because the zoom rings and focus rings were made from solid rubber, and they'd all be sticky. The only thing to do would be to replace them.

Thanks for telling us how to remove that sticky rubber cotting since my Blackberry 9900 has the back becoming sticky

Have you ever tried to repair the moving mechanism of older smartphones, like a sliding physical keyboard, and its internal parts (display, digitizer, battery connectors etc...)? For years i've wanted to repair my old Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro, but i've never actually got to doing it.

Ah, remind me of the olden days. I used to use Treo 650 and Centro. I didn't like Windows mobiles at that time as they are not as good as Palm OS. The battery life in Treo650 was amazing, it could stay on for a week. These phones are actually PDA phones. The power button is actually to switch on the cellular mode. Long before Apple used a physical switch to mute the phone, Palm already used it. Palm also used a SIM tray where you can swap your SIM without turning off your phones. You can easily disassemble the phones to clean it. I did it several times. This phone is just like a lego.

There are different kinds of soft touch coatings. Some are going to be gross and sticky, while other are ok after many years. For example I have 2 Wacom graphics tablets from the same era. Intuos5 holds its soft touch pretty good, while Cintiq Companion Hybrid's became sticky a bit and I washed it out with rubbing and alcohol.

Plastic has sometime some additives to make it soft touch. With time those additives may separate from the plastic itself, moving to the surface and thus making the surface of the object sticky. It happens to anything really: phones, phone case, or glasses frames.

To remove the melted rubber, use makeup wipes. It removes sticky rubber from rubberized optical gear, and sticky control buttons on your steering wheel.

“Alcohol and lots of it. For the phone that is” Hugh if I needed to do this I would need some for myself too haha

The UI on the Palm III and Tungsten models was brilliant so it's interesting that the version of the company that made these phones went with Microsoft's OS.

Hey man that i had that samsung while studying in Aus. Might still have the charger somewhere. That wheel on the side as you correctly deduced is a scroll wheel with a ok push button. Was a fun phone before blackberries took over 😅

I have a handheld radio and a hair dryer with the same rubber coating, and both are turning back into oil. Whose idea was it to make a HAIR DRYER out of rubber?

Power on upon battery insertion may likely encourage users to remove the battery before any long term storage. That itself can save many devices from battery expansion.

I loved that model Samsung, I had a custom android rom on mine before I passed it onto a family member.

It’s the hand oils and grease etc that break it down over time plus they’ve probably had dirt left on them since they were last used and it’s reacted with the rubber coating

Like other people in the comment section are saying, this melting is due to rubber reversion. I discovered this in MrMobile's video where he revisited his 1st cellphone which had this issue. For more info, polymer solutions has a good explanation of rubber reversion

I’ve had mice go sticky on me too. Isopropyl alcohol did clean it with lots of rubbing. As to the CAUSE of the butyl rubber breakdown, my theory is: airborne solvents. Insecticide in particular.

Hey Hugh, with those touchscreen HTC devices, despite the weird look, it is just Mini USB. A few years back at a resale shop, I got a Sprint (US defunct carrier) version of the phone, and even the original charger is just a Mini USB cable. They're definitely a weird way to use Windows Mobile 6, but you should try to give them a go. I really liked mine, and spent quite a bit of time tweaking it to my needs.

It’s the wicked phone of the west.... “I’m MELTING”.....🤣

IPA and baby wipes seem to do it, you can also use spray on Oven cleaner.

I just tried to restore my dad's old treo 750 about a month ago but I cannot find the charger. It has the melting problem the same as these but I didn't know a good way to clean it up fully, I did find the alcohol stopped it being so sticky and that's where I left it. Aside from that I took apart every component to clean it and reassembled it. Without the charger that's where it sits without being able to turn on.

I case of HTC despite funky charging port, the miniUSB plug fits Perfectly

It could be a new method to prevent people from falling smartphones, making the back sticky, but I don't think it can make great success. Nice video as always.

I had this rubber coating on a Samsung S3 frontier smartwatch, and before I sold it 2 weeks ago I removed the coating with break cleaner. It does the job 10 times better than isopropyl alcohol. Be careful though as brake cleaner can eat through the plastic.

Something similar has recently started happening to one of my car's inside door handles, so good timing on this video, now I know how to fix it, lol.

This would be Dankpods' worst nightmare.

It's the additives in the vinyl and rubber decomposing over time. Not limited to these phones. many plastics are going sticky or just plain turning to dust. I have a GM steering wheel from the 70's that has gotten sticky and cleaning it doesn't last long. My mom had a electric hair clipper set from the 1960's whose plastic housing totally warped and turned to dust. If you look at some electrical cords, you see greenish goo coming out around the prongs or the wires themselves. Stuff smells bad and the cord has to be replaced before it compromises the electronics. There are a lot of materials that aren't holding up with time. No-one thought a lot of the stuff would still be around 30-40+ years. You can't really stop the chemical decomposition.

I liked the smartphones with mechanical keyboards. You could write with it pretty quickly. From 2013 they disappeared from the market.

Pretty sure that Samsung is what we got in the US as the "BlackJack". It was Samsung made Windows Mobile-based competitor for the super-popular Blackberry at the time. It was a great device, I had one and really enjoyed it.

ouuh those htcs bring back memories of my father 🥺🥺, i would love to have one of them now but it's impossible right now 😭

The HTCs looks to be a variant of the HTC touch Dual. In my remember, they were powered by micro-usb. My wife had one of them and it was a great compact phone with a keyboard.

Its called rubber reversion, Micheal fisher talks about this a lot in his “when phones were fun” series.

For devices without battery, I believe you can get a "universal charger" that have movable pins, and just attempt to charge the battery outside the device. I have one and it's been very helpful reviving many old cameras and phone.

I've found contact cleaner, PCB cleaner and a magic sponge gets through this stuff quite well with minimal damage.

i have that samsung, both international and US version! ths one you got is the i600, mine is completely dead the thing on the side is a scroll wheel, so fun to play with

If you are able to take those sticky pieces off the phones, then simply put them into dishwasher and it will remove that sticky coating. I have already cleaned this way many laptops, mobile phones and even car interior parts with great success and it is really effortless.

I loved my Treo 755p. Played a pretty decent game of Doom and had NES and GameBoy emulators on it. That's still pretty much all I I want out of my phone now.

melting rubber is annoyning. The rubber on joysticks on my ps3 controller for example is melting. I spray some WD40 now from time to time on the rubber. Not the best solution but it helps for a while. What would be interesting to know is what rubber lenovo (and ibm) is using on the thinkpads. I never seen the rubber on these melting.

Oh god this makes me think back to the reel to reel machine I fixed the belts melted and got into the mechanism that actually controlled things like play stop and fast forward and I had to disassemble all of the metal levers and clean each one thoroughly and it took days. I think I still have some tools stained with the goop I will never escape it

HEY, THE TOUCH DUAL SLIDER PHONES WORKS WITH MINI USB (MOTOROLA AND OLD BLACKBERRY USB) HAD ONE AND USED THIS TRICK PLENTY OF TIMES. HOPE TO SEE A PART 2!!! I MISS MY TOUCH DUAL ALOT OF GAMES ON THERE

I have used all these types of phones as a teen. My uncle owned a phone distribution outlet. Of all the bunch, i liked Sony Ericsson TXT. It shoots a great quality photos even with 2MP and I have abused the phone like crazy. It ran Java ME apps. It also has such sticky back rubber. It was super easy to scrape off even at 1 month age. Before it vulcanised removal is easy

Aww man... I know another Aussie YTer who'd love a crack at one of these nuggets... DankPods!