Monsoon Tips: How To Dry Out Your Wet Smartphone | TechTree.com

Monsoon Tips: How To Dry Out Your Wet Smartphone

Here's what you should do if you get your ever get your smartphone soaking wet.

 
Monsoon Tips: How To Dry Out Your Wet Smartphone

The monsoons are finally here and chances are that you, along with your smartphone, are bound to get soaked sooner or later. Good luck if you have a fancy smartphone that's waterproof or magically repels water, if not, read on to find out how to give your smartphone the best fighting chance to make it through.

Step 1: Rip out the battery/power off

The first and probably the most important thing to do after you've got your phone very wet is to yank out the battery. Don't bother with waiting for the phone to power down unless there isn't any way for you to get the battery out. The reason for doing this is to prevent the water within the phone from shorting anything out, and the faster you do it, the lesser the risk of that happening.

Step 2: Dry off with a soft towel

You're still left with a soaking mess of a phone after performing step one. Dry off the phone with a soft towel, getting rid of any water on the exterior and preventing any more from getting in through the ports. Chances are you already see some form of condensation on the inside, but even if you don't, you're not out of the woods yet.

Step 3: Blow compressed air into the ports

I'm going to take it as a given that you're smart enough not to place the phone in a microwave or add heat with a hair dryer at this point. Both will pretty much damage the delicate internals of your smartphone, rendering it useless. Blow air into the ports and other orifices into which water has entered, however make sure you do it in a way that no more water gets into the phone.

Step 4: Place in an airtight container with rice/desiccant

By now you've done everything to remove as much water as possible from your smartphone. However, chances are that there still is water in places you can't access or see and in the event of you trying to power on your device, could fry the internals. There are two easy and surefire ways of getting every last bit of water out of your phone, performing which you stand the best chance of rescuing your phone. While rice can be found at every home, you can collect the desiccant that you find in the new shoe box, hard disc or even clothes.

Dunk in Rice

Some people swear by this technique and it couldn't be more straightforward. Find yourself an airtight container (must be airtight!), place your phone inside and fill the rest up with rice (uncooked and dry). As you might have seen in your little experiments in the kitchen, rice absorbs water, it has an affinity for it. Leave your smartphone in the container with rice for 24-48 hours for best results.

The only downside to using rice to dry out your phone as you might imagine is a soggy mess of rice sticking to your phone by the end of it. You also run the risk of getting rice into the ports, which would indeed be hard to clean out. Top tip is to wrap your phone in a soft paper tissue before immersing it in the rice.

Place in container with desiccant

If you're wondering what desiccant is, it's a hygroscopic substance (ie. It has a strong affinity for water). It's nothing but the small sachet you find at the bottom of a box of shoes you just bought. Silica gel is the most common form, and it's job is to create a perfectly dry environment, so using it to suck the water out of your phone is a no brainer.

You'd need to start stocking up on the little desiccant sachets to have enough to really help in the case of a wet phone. It's smart to place them in an air tight container all ready to drop your phone into in the case of an accident. Again as with the rice, keep your phone in the air tight container with the desiccant for 24-48 hours to get all the water out.

After following all these steps, there still is a chance that your phone may not power on, and in that case the damage has already been done. Still, it's definitely worth the try as you can be 100 percent sure that all the water is out of your phone after following these steps, so theoretically it should be as good as before.


Tags : Mobile Phones, water damage, DIY

 
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