If you happen to face the unfortunate situation of your phone taking a fall into water, you can still hope to recover it, if you follow these simple steps. Do note that this will work best in case the phone is retrieved quickly enough, and hopefully hasn’t been damaged beyond redemption. We certainly donot recommend testing your phone by dropping it in water and then following these steps!
Less than 5% of phones in the market today offer protection from water , or are water proof, in layman’s terms. Thus, it is important for you to know just what to do if your phone is part of the vast majority, and suffers the fate of a water dip.
First, the don’ts: Of course, you can start by being very careful around water bodies. If you still manage to suffer the ‘accidental’ drop, then first is obviously a quick retrieval, the sooner the better. Immediately after getting it out, DONOT switch it on, or shake the water out, or throw it around hoping to shake out the water. Don’t even think about switching it on to check, in case the phone is already off. If it is on still, carefully switch it off. So called solutions to dry up a phone quickly, like microwaving it, or placing it on a plate inside a grill at lowest temperature, are to be absolutely avoided.
Here’s what you should do. First, gently open up the phone, to the extent the build allows it. That means, take out all the external, and parts like battery etc that can be removed. Besides this, there is the the phone case, the SIM card/s, any memory card.
That done, take a really gentle piece of cloth like the ones used to wipe spectacles or phone screens, and gently wipe it across all the exposed and evacuated parts to remove any easy to reach moisture. And now we move to the hack. Make a pouch of rice to bury the phone inside this, and put it away for at least a day or more. Rice provides a great dehydrating environment, and it should help soak up or dry out the parts you couldn’t reach with your cloth or anything else. Resist the urge to check it earlier, if you really value your phone.
After over 24 hours, take the phone out, and assemble it back again, with the battery, sim card etc. See if it starts up. If it doesn’t, check if the battery needs to be charged. If that works, observe carefully for the next few minutes, for any signs of heating or otherwise. In case the phone does not charge, it might be worthwhile to check if the damage is only to the battery, in which case you can go for a replacement. If that works, good. If even that doesn’t work , ten you might just have to enter the market again for a new phone. Hopefully with your lessons learnt well.