How to Save a Wet Phone Using Rice!
How to Save a Wet Phone Using Rice
Most phones now come with a degree of waterproofing, so if you accidentally spill your drink over your device, it’s not a disaster.
However, dropping your phone in the bath, sink or toilet is a lot more serious and can damage it for good. If your handset suffers a dunking, don’t just gaze in horror as it lays in water – the first and most important rule is to act quickly. The sooner you snatch it out of harm’s way, the better.
A well-known trick for drying out a moist mobile is to put it in a bag of rice. The small, hard grains are inedible until they absorb enough water to plump up into a light fluffy side dish, and the theory is that they will suck the moisture from your phone – thus removing the problem. But can sticking a wet phone in rice really save it, and are there better options out there to try?
But can sticking a wet phone in rice really save it, and are there better options out there to try?
The most common damage to a phone is an accidental plunge in the toilet but we decided to go for a more sanitary reconstruction and just dipped it for a minute or so in a bowl of water.
How we tested Water Damage?
Our test phone had a removable cover but not a removable battery, so we took the back cover off, removed SIM and memory card to allow water to drain out from any gaps, and dried everything off with paper towels (if we’d immersed the phone in muddy or salty water, we’d have needed to wash it in clean water before taking this step). For good measure, we also put the phone in a sock and swung it.
When all that was done, we filled a bag with rice, buried the phone among the grains, resealed the bag and left it to dry. The longer you dry the phone, the more chance there is recovery, so the most difficult part is to resist the urge to keep checking it.
The Result
In our case, the phone did turn on and seems to work pretty much as before. There is a large element of luck when it comes to drying a phone, and your success or failure is partly down to the phone itself, and where the water manages to find its way inside.It’s difficult to say just how much of our test phone’s survival is down to the rice, and how much is due to the device drying out naturally. Either way, we still have a working phone – so that’s a definite win.
The rice trick is certainly not a myth and we recommend giving a try if your phone gets soggy, but we wouldn’t recommend deliberately soaking it to find out.
