How To Repair A Cell Phone That Is Water Damage

Common advice says that if yous've dropped your smartphone into the toilet—or some other trunk of liquid—all you have to do is toss your afflicted device into a bowl of rice and everything will be fine come morning.

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Sadly, this is more than a myth than useful advice. Merely that doesn't mean y'all should give up on your waterlogged phone. Before you lot endeavour going to a repair store (and potentially spend hundreds of dollars), there are plenty of DIY hacks you tin effort out.

Waterproof vs. H2o-Resistant

First, information technology's worth knowing if your telephone is in whatsoever real danger. In recent years, many smartphone manufacturers have made their devices water-resistant. Just water resistant is not the aforementioned matter as waterproof.

Waterproof means that a device is impervious to water for any elapsing, while water-resistant ways that a given device is graded for water exposure for a given amount of time and up to a sure depth. When we talk nigh watches, smartphones, and tablets, we normally mean water-resistant.

To effigy out how tough your phone stands up against water, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the IP standard, which the International Electrotechnical Commission in Geneva, Switzerland drew upwardly to designate how resistant an electronic device is to freshwater and other common materials like clay, dust, or sand.

IEC

The side by side digit, following "IP," is the rating for a device's resistance to solids. And so, all water-resistant phones commencement out with "IP6" in the code proper name, which tells you that no harmful clay or dust will get into the unit even following direct contact for viii hours.

The fourth digit volition be either a 7 or an 8, meaning your device is either rated IP67 or IP68. The old standard ways that your telephone can be submerged in up to 1 meter of freshwater for most thirty minutes without any seeping into the device, while IP68 means that the device tin be submerged in up to i.v meters of water for upwards to 30 minutes.

But if your device doesn't run across either standard, like the budget-friendly Pixel 3a, yous'll need to jump into action.

Start, Turn Off Your Telephone

close up of sim card and mobile phone on white table

Halfdark Getty Images

Afterward you've fished out your phone, immediately power downwards the device to reduce the adventure of whatsoever electronic components shorting on you.

Next, use a pivot or a SIM bill of fare removal tool to popular open the SIM tray and remove the SIM bill of fare. Water could accept gotten into this tiny opening and y'all don't want to risk having to replace your SIM carte, too. It's not a huge expense, only it tin be a hurting.

⚠️ Take out your battery if you tin, but there is a practiced gamble that your phone doesn't have a removable battery.

Dry out Your Phone ASAP

samsung galaxy s5 smartphone, back removed, showing battery, sim card

RapidEye Getty Images

Next up: dry your telephone off. This sounds like the simplest footstep, but this is actually where things get tricky. While rice is that always-popular urban fable, information technology might non be the best material to soak up excess H2O.

Don't even think near taking a hair dryer to your handset. Added heat could cause corrosion if there is any water on your phone'due south hardware. Instead, get-go with a soft, microfiber fabric—the kind y'all use to wipe smudges off of your glasses. If yous can remove the back panel of your phone, use a textile to wipe downwards the components inside.

This should become without saying, just don't put information technology in the microwave. You're only going to take hold of your phone on fire, which certainly will arrive dry, but not very operational. Instead, if you lot want some warmth to coax out any water has non yet dissipated, consider letting your telephone residue on a windowsill in some sunlight or using air-in-a-can to blast the water out.

So About That Rice...

high angle view of silica gel over black background

Mgr. Jakub Cuba / EyeEm Getty Images

You could endeavor powering your phone on at this indicate to appraise the damage, but we recommend taking a further step earlier risking information technology. Submerge your phone in a desiccant—a substance that will induce dryness by arresting water.

Just know that rice isn't equally absorptive as you may think. Gazelle, a company known for buying used and broken devices and then reselling them, conducted a series of experiments to run across which desiccants worked all-time with which phones. In the tests, Gazelle submerged ix different smartphones for ten seconds each before placing the phones into a bowl of some absorbent household material, like rice.

"If a drying agent is used, silica gel is the all-time of the options tested, followed by couscous and instant rice."

Half dozen of 9 devices did ability back on afterwards using the rice method, and some other 2 were recovered plenty to at least pull most of the data from the telephone. Interestingly, Samsung devices did better with the rice than iPhones.

Withal, it turned out that rice was still an "inferior" drying agent, coming behind not but silica gel—the packets that come in the packet with nearly electronics to continue wet at bay during shipment and throughout a device's shelf life—but too other materials like oats and couscous.

"If a drying agent is used, silica gel is the best of the options tested, followed by couscous and instant rice. Conventional cat litter, oats, and chia seeds are not recommended because of the dust and debris that they eolith inside of the phone," the visitor wrote in its findings. "Water damage recovery kits that comprise pocket-size quantities of silica gel are not recommended because they are unlikely to perform also as open air. Uncooked white rice is not recommended due to its poor performance every bit a drying agent."

And then use silica instead of rice. If you don't have that, endeavour some oats. Never seal the container that y'all're using, you want the h2o to evaporate.

If All Else Fails...

If your phone was submerged for a expert amount of time, or your telephone short-circuited, yous nonetheless take options. Apple accepts water-damaged phones as function of its trade-in programme, though you'll have to take tempered expectations for how much money y'all'll get on a gift card in render.

If you're not Team iPhone, you tin resell your device on a site like Gazelle, which also accepts water-damaged devices. If those methods don't yield plenty cash to buy a new telephone, maybe yous can at least buy a waterproof case in training for your adjacent ane.

What About Tablets and Laptops?

With tablets, you'll want to follow the same general rules every bit above, though you may not take a sim bill of fare to remove. With laptops, though, your arroyo volition diverge a bit—expert luck fitting your laptop into a bowl of silica gel.

While powering down a laptop to avoid short-circuiting, don't attempt to pull whatever chargers out of the wall with your bare easily—it's a serious shock threat. Instead, turn off the ability by flipping the corresponding switches in your circuit breaker before you lot unplug the charger. Take the dorsum plate off and wipe downwardly the components with a microfiber towel. You should gear up the computer upside down and allow it to air dry. When you power it back on, yous should be good to become.

If non, endeavor replacing the bombardment. If you lot're however stuck, well, yous're but going to accept to hit a repair store.

Courtney Linder Deputy Editor Earlier joining Pop Mech, Courtney was the technology reporter at her hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.