A lot of us are pretty screwed without our phones. We’ve become so reliant on them that not having them around can feel like the end of the world. It’s one thing to accidentally leave your phone at home or for your battery to die, but it’s a whole other nightmare if you drop it in water. Whether a drink gets spilled on it or it falls in the pool, water damage is the worst. When something like this happens, you have to act fast to save your iPhone from instant death, but what exactly do you do?
Keep calm
People tend to have incredibly fast reactions when their phone is exposed to water. While it’s necessary to act quickly, you can make things worse by not keeping calm. Don’t immediately wipe away all the water or blow it off – that won’t help.
After quickly dabbing the outside dry with a paper towel, turn your phone off. It’s important to remove vulnerable components while the damage is still fresh as this will give your phone the best chance of survival. Unfortunately, due to the way that iPhones are structured, you can’t easily open up your phone to get at the battery. What you can do, though, is remove the sim card.
Once this is done, hold the phone upright and give it a gentle shake to try and clear some excess water from any of the ports.
Removing the battery
This requires specific tools and isn’t ideal for everyone to do, especially with minor water damage. However, removing the battery will reduce the risk of your phone short-circuiting and will allow you to dry your iPhone better.
A quick online search should show you what screwdriver you’ll need for the job. The screws used are minuscule, therefore the head of the screwdriver will be tiny. Naturally, you’re unlikely to have one of these around the house, and you won’t have the time to wait for one to arrive if your phone suddenly becomes damaged. So, you’ll have to decide before anything happens whether you want to invest in one or not.
Once you have the tool, though, it’s as simple as unscrewing the fixtures and opening up the back. When that’s done, just remove the battery and dab the area with a dry cloth. Make sure you don’t wipe because this could spread the water around.
Drying it out
Has anyone ever told you to use rice to dry out your phone? It’s the most common hack for this problem, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most effective. Dry rice doesn’t absorb the moisture as much as people believe, and it may not affect your phone whatsoever. What you really want to use is something like silica gel. You’ll likely have seen these little packets whenever you’ve ordered something electronic.
All you have to do is cover your phone in these packets and leave them there for two days. They should hopefully absorb most, if not all, of the moisture and give your phone the best chance of surviving its ordeal. It’s important that during this time you don’t mess around with your phone and leave the silica gel to do its job.
Hope for the best
After two days, your phone will be ready to turn on again. Put everything back where it should be and hope for the best. If it doesn’t immediately turn on, try charging it and see if anything happens then. Chances are your iPhone will be functional once again, or it will be gone for good. Keep in mind if it does continue working then there could be problems sometime in the future. Make sure to always backup your phone in case it does suddenly have an issue.
This is by no means a foolproof plan. When a phone gets water damage, there’s no knowing how it will react. However, this method should at least give you the best chance of saving your iPhone.
