Imagine yourself holding your phone one minute then without warning it falls. The worst part is it drops in water. No doubt you’re aware, water and your phone don’t mix. It leads to water damage, which can be fatal if you don’t act fast.
Regardless if your phone is an Android smartphone or an iPhone, dropping it by accident (or on purpose if you’re in a moment of rage) is terrible for it.
For whatever reason it happened, the first thing you should do, for your sake and sanity, is to grab it! Daniel Howley of Yahoo Tech is emphatic about this point, hence the use of an exclamation point to stress his point. As Howley points out, the sooner you get it out of the water, the better your chances are of saving your phone from damage.
However, he also clarifies it might be a lost cause if it falls into a large body of water. Risking your life to save your phone isn’t a good idea. So, in this case, it would be alright to cry and focus your sights on a new phone.
Next steps to take after grabbing your phone
Once you have your wet phone in your hand, here are the following steps you should take. Remember, it’s important to stay calm through all of this. Your composure throughout the whole process will help you remember what to do next.
- Power off
It’s instinctive for anyone to try and apply CPR to their phone as if it were a drowning victim. However, doing so would be counterintuitive with your purpose of reviving it after the accident, according to I Fix Your i.
- Water damage won’t be the COD in your phone’s off death certificate. It would be the electrical current traveling through your phone’s waterlogged circuitry.
- The combination of water and current will cause a short that would destroy your phone.
So, you need to keep your phone off until you’re sure it’s dry.
- Don’t plug in your device
You might decide to plug in your charger just to make sure that your device is still working – please don’t. You’ll make the problem worse.
- When you plug in your wet device, it will only activate the components inside, and damage will spread gradually. You don’t want that to happen.
- There’s also a possibility of your device to short-circuit once you plug it in.
- Don’t try to DIY
Sure, the internet and your friends can give you a hundred ways on how you can save your device on your own. But frankly, most of these don’t help at all.
- Your friends might have encouraged you to blow dry your wet device. This is one strategy you shouldn’t use on your wet device. You’ll only be sending particles (especially when your phone got wet at the beach) into internal parts, which were not damaged in the first place.
- The rice grain hack doesn’t work. Rice is not a drying agent so it would be useless placing your wet device in a bowl of rice. It doesn’t do anything and can only cause more damage to your device.
- Don’t wait for days before acting on your wet device. It might be dry by that time, but it can also be too late to save anything.
- Send it out for repairs
Getting your phone dry and trying to save it is very stressful indeed. But it shouldn’t be as there are some mobile repair companies out there which could do the job for you:
- Search within your areas for mobile repair companies who can be the solution to your problems. Ask your friends too if they can give referrals.
- Some mobile repair companies would suggest that you get your device to them ASAP. The sooner you give your device to the experts, the sooner they can assess whether your device can be saved or not.
- These companies have strategies on how they can save your device and your storage. This can include disassembling your device, and certain parts are placed in a solution which will remove impurities (e.g., sand, or dirt) and dry it out in a controlled environment.
Conclusion
Remember, it can happen to anyone. So, there’s no need to get mad at yourself about it. The best you can do is to keep these steps in mind, so you have a better chance of saving your phone and be able to use it again.