How to deal with a wet phone

Last year, it was reported that 19% of mobile users drop their phone into the toilet. How many of you have done it? It’s okay, there’s no need to be ashamed.

We can all be clumsy with our mobile phones – dropping them in puddles, into the washing up bowl, even into the fish tank. Accidents do happen, but it’s not the end of the world. Here are a few tips for dealing with a potentially water-damaged phone.

Let’s say you drop your mobile phone into a bowl of washing up. Your first reaction is probably to panic, run around and cry your eyes out, picturing the world crumbling around you. Calm down. Retrieve the phone as quickly as possible – the longer you leave it in there, the higher the risk of irreversible water damage. If the phone is still switched on, turn it off.

Using a clean towel or a few sheets of kitchen paper, dry the phone as much as you can to prevent excess water from seeping through the outer plastic casing. The plastic covering is quite tight, so should prevent a lot of the water from permeating the inside of the phone if it is retrieved quickly enough.

The next steps you choose to follow are dependent on the type of mobile phone you have. We’ve split it into two sections.

For iPhones

Getting inside an iPhone is trickier than other phones, and when you’re under pressure, you don’t want to be fiddling around with the intricacies. Once you’ve dried the phone to the best of your ability, place the iPhone into a cup/bag/bowl of rice, or any other substance capable of drawing in moisture. Make sure that the container allows the iPhone to be fully submerged. Place the container in a warm place – a radiator would be ideal. Leave for at least 24 hours (the longer, the better, of course), and then switch the phone on.

An even better solution is to place the iPhone into a container of silica gel. We’ve all seen the little packets of the stuff when we buy leather products, shoes and beef jerky. If you haven’t accumulated enough little packets to fully submerge the phone, you can buy them online. We understand that not everyone has silica gel readily available, so rice should do the trick.

For other phones

Other phones have an accessible battery, so once you’ve dried it off, open it up and remove the battery, SIM card and any other detachables. Place these into a container of rice/silica gel and follow the steps above as normal.

If your phone doesn’t switch on after 24 hours, leave in the substance for another 24. After that, if it still doesn’t work, you may have to get a replacement. Visit your local phone store and ask for advice.