If your precious smartphone gets water spilled on it, or falls into a bowl of water or the PC bowl (yuck!), don’t panic. There is something that you can do immediately to save it.
What To Do:
- Turn it off immediately, and if the battery is removable, do remove it
- Immerse the phone in a container of dry uncooked rice for about 8 hours
- Put the battery back in and turn it back on.
Why rice? Rice is an absorbent and so absorbs moisture. When you immerse your wet phone in rice, the rice absorbs the moisture without putting your phone at the risk of heat. Sunning your wet phone can actually be damaging, as direct heat isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered.
Alternatively, just buy a water-proof smartphone instead if you regularly hang around a lot of water, so you never have to worry.
Hahaha..this got me laughing.
rice is good cos it’s readily available but it’s not the most effective moisture control agent. i advise people to keep the small packs of silica gel that come with their bags, shoes, leather products and food.
more. importantly you’ve skipped the most important step which is drying the phone as much as possible via mechanical means eg towelling and then fanning or vacuuming. that should be step #2. dessiccants/moisture control agents are good at controlling small amounts of water or water vapor they’re not drying agents per se
Some dessicants
Activated alumina
Aerogel
Benzophenone
Bentonite clay
Calcium chloride
Calcium sulfate
Cobalt(II) chloride
Copper(II) sulfate
Lithium chloride
Lithium bromide
Magnesium sulfate
Magnesium perchlorate
Molecular sieve
Potassium carbonate
Silica gel
Sodium
Sodium chlorate
Sodium chloride
Sodium hydroxide
Sodium sulfate
Sucrose
Errrr what are these things you listed up here??? So we should go studying chemistry to dry our phones? Lol
most of the dessicants you listed are either not readily available/accessible to the average person, unsuitable for this use case because of their reactiveness (sodium, seriously, group 1 metal, what could possibly go wrong? unless you’re trying to destroy the phone sha) or unsuitable because the substance isn’t pre-packaged in small bags like silica gel or too fine and will sip into the phone and clog moving parts/circuitry
So, can those water proof phones truly stand a soak in the water?
There are holes in the.phone..hole for charging, the microphone, earphone.. are they truly TRULY impermeable.to water?
Stolen from somewhere.
So don’t making calls in torrential rainfall
well it depends on the Ingress Protection rating, making calls in the rain is not a threat to any IPx certified device, unless you get pneumonia or get struck by lightning. i say this as someone who’s used an Xperia Z1 & a Nokia 5210. as long as you leave the ports covered and you don’t go diving or leave the phone immersed for long periods, you’re safe from water damage, at least the phone is
Since Sony has started denying Warrantys for their so called waterproofed phones with water damage, I guess buying waterproofed phones are not exactly guarantees against water damage,on the other hand rice is a ubiquitous commodity in our society and the best solution being the one most handy at that point in time,this a good bit of information to file for the proverbial rainy day..
Waterproof isn’t quite waterproof, as I learned from a colleague today whose nice new Sony phone suffered water damage on holiday. She was told unofficially that waterproof phones aren’t quite waterproof. In her case, the water made it past the seals and socket covers on her device which were firmly closed.
And when you’re away from home, where exactly will you get a badge of rice to immerse your phone in a hurry?
interesting, while i had my Z1 (~ 6 months) my friends would routinely test the phone’s water resistance. so much that i started backing up my phone everyday since it was inevitable that something would go wrong one day. somehow the phone survived the constant “testing”, after months of resting in all kinds of liquids (water, coke, beer, wine, name it) the phone managed to get lost (or maybe it ran away from my friends)
In her case, she wanted to take a photo in the sea (it wasn’t dunked), and found that the screen was unresponsive. Back at home, she opened the covers and water came out. Originally when she took it back to the store she was told she must have left the covers open which she hadn’t.
I’m of the opinion the IP-rated phones are actually water resistant rather than waterproof. And being waterproof has levels.
Lol at rice solution.
I hope y’all realise if you dont cook the rice after wetting it with the phone within days, it will spoil the whole rice in the sack or bucket.
save the phone first, rice is cheap. plus you don’t need a bucket of rice
Still on rice solution, has anyone actually tried this???
yes, i have, many times
it works, most of the time, if you use it well
used to drop the dismantled phone in a ziploc bag full of rice, seal & place in a warm place & change the rice every 12 hours or so.
Well,we all have to wait till our phone accidentally gets soaked,would be foolhardy to try it just to find out..
It’s not foolhardy jor. It’s mr Mo and Team’s job. Lol. Maybe with a review unit anyway.
Hahaha,na Naija we dey o..no wastage in our dictionary..
I still believe it’s Mr Mo’s job sha 🙂 . When the iphone gets released, he and his team should purchase a unit to test if the phone will bend.
Haha