How to Dry Out a Cell Phone

Your cell phone suddenly falls in water, becomes wet in the rain, or gets exposed to water by some means. What will you do in such a situation? You need to try to dry it out quickly.

As water and electricity never go together, when water gets into a cell phone, you should first and foremost remove the battery. If the cell phone is a GSM one, also make sure that you take out the SIM card. See to it that you remove the memory card too, if it has one. Try to dismantle the phone as much as possible, but not completely.

To preclude major damage to the inner circuits and components of the phone, you need to dry out the water completely. The more time the water stays in the phone, more are the possibilities of serious damages to its parts.

Many a time, the cell phone will go dead after water enters it, and you may feel that nothing can be done at that moment. However, using few simple methods, you can make the phone work again, that is if you are lucky.

After you have removed the battery, the SIM card, the memory card, and other accessories, you need to wipe them thoroughly with a soft dry cloth or a paper towel. After wiping off the water visible, leave the mobile phone and its parts in a cool and dry place. With all the components taken apart, you can even keep it for drying out in the sun.

You can use a vacuum cleaner to suck out the moisture from the phone. Run the hose through all the parts which you think may have been exposed to water. Also, check if there are any minor cracks from where there are chances of the liquid seeping in.

If a wet-dry vacuum cleaner is not available, you need to use a can of compressed air as an alternative. Do not use a hair dryer, as the heat emitted from it can be harmful to the inner parts of the phone.

Many people are surprised when they find out that rice can also be used for drying out water from a wet cell phone. In order to do this, take a bowl of dry rice, put the cell phone in it, and keep it overnight. This is also a good method of soaking out all the moisture from the phone. 

If you are worried that the dust of the grains would get inside the mobile, you have the option of using silica gel packets as a good alternative to rice.

Another option is to keep the cell phone on heat vents of a computer or television set. The heat emitted from these vents is most appropriate for drying out the moisture. Do not keep the cell phone on the vents for a substantial period of time, as extra heat can do a lot of damage to the inner parts. Never experiment drying out a cell phone in the oven.

Just make sure that you do not expose the cell phone to excessive heat while trying out these methods. If you aren't too unlucky, your phone might just spring back to life.