Disaster strikes: The day my waterproof watch stopped being waterproof

I would say that my fitness life was kind of forever changed by the introduction of a rather inexpensive smartwatch. I don't use most of the features on it but at just over $100 I feel as though it was a good investment. I am a lot more likely to track my progress on my runs and cycling and even swimming when I can look at the data later.

I am always a bit apprehensive when a product says it is waterproof and it only costs $100 though and my fears were realized the other day when I got out of the pool and the face would no longer light up. I wasn't sure if I had charged it but I noticed the crack in the face after the fact.

I had to hold it at just the right angle in order to even see the crack but there it is and very noticeable once the face isn't lit up and I zoom in a bit.

These watch faces are pretty durable but just like you would expect with any plastic or glass they are not indestructible.

I am still hopeful that I can sort it out because I was reading about how a lot of these things have small intermittent - if that is even the correct word - fuses or switches inside that can detect a short and save the electronics as long as you sort it out rather quickly.

At the moment my Xiaomi S2 watch is in a tupperware container of rice and I will leave it there for a few days.

If it doesn't pan out for me and it is fried I suppose I am glad that it happened to a $100 watch and not a $400 Garmin. There is no warranty repair for using a product that is damaged, there is no way they would offer something like that.

So I guess the lesson here - if the watch doesn't magically dry out and fix itself - is that I need to inspect this thing every now and then to make sure things like this are not there.

I have no idea how this crack happened because I don't do a whole lot of really rough sports. It may have happened right here in the pool as I was using the ladder or something. With my luck it was probably me doing something so normal like simply taking it off at night and putting it on the bedside table too roughly.

Even if it doesn't come back to life, which I think is likely, I did get over a year of daily use out of this thing and its presence in my life did make me exercise more than I normally would, so it was still a good investment. I was so happy with it that if I do have to buy another watch I will probably just buy the exact same one again.

The strange thing at the moment is that the swimming exercise actually comes up in my app so right before it died it must have done the noble thing and sent off my data right before it was forced to shut down. What a noble warrior!