How To Dry Out A Cell Phone That Went Through The Washer

SAN FRANCISCO — Smart phones and water just don't mix, as millions of people suffering through this season'due south massive hurricanes are learning.

Experts say even if a phone is drenched, there are steps you lot tin take to recover it — but it takes patience and the ability to leave the phone lone.

What kills a wet phone is electricity, said Gary Tan with DE iPhone repair, a San Francisco-based company that offers multiple sites for smart phone repair and drying.

"Do not charge information technology. Practise non plug it in to meet if information technology works. If it'south on, electricity will catamenia, it will touch the h2o that'south inside and that's when your fry the (circuit) lath," he said.

This is also true fifty-fifty if your phone is still working after it was dropped in water.

"You didn't get lucky. Turn information technology off!" said Craig Beinecke, co-founder of TekDry, a Denver, Colo.-based company that has more than than 600 sites nationwide where consumers tin quickly become small electronics dried out.

"We come across a lot of people who come in and say, 'I dropped it in water and I pulled it out actually fast and I figured I got lucky, and and then the adjacent twenty-four hours the touch on screen didn't work,'" he said.

What actually happened is that it took a while for the water to reach sensitive connections inside the phone. Once information technology did, the water shorted them out.

In a modest number of cases swamped phones are able to dry out on their own over the course of days or weeks. But it's not common.

And while some newer phones are water resistant and can withstand a quick driblet in a bucket or toilet, none are h2o proof.

Related:Dropped your telephone in h2o? The ready isn't rice

Drying on the counter is every bit fast equally the rice treatment

Multiple websites suggest sticking electronics that accept been submerged in liquid in a handbag of uncooked rice, to draw the water out. But that really doesn't work and can innovate dust and starch into the phone every bit well, said Beinecke.

"We did a study, and rice was slower to work than but leaving the phone out on the counter. And neither worked fast enough. After about 48 hours in rice, merely 13% of the water came out of the phone," he said.

By the time the phone had fully dried out, corrosion volition have had time to damage the frail electronics within, he said.

The preferred method to safely dry out phones is to boil off the water inside them at low temperatures under vacuum.

San Antonio, Texas-based DryBox has about lx such sites in Texas and Florida that offer self-service vacuum drying for electronics. The items are placed in a chamber slightly smaller than a shoe box and then put under vacuum while being heated.

The lower the pressure, the lower the temperature at which water boils. The machine allows the h2o inside the phone to eddy off at temperatures that can't damage the components, usually inside about 30 minutes.

The sooner a telephone is dried out, the better adventure it has of surviving a dunking unscathed, said DryBox president David Naumann. In his experience, within 36 hours the chances for success are three out of four. Afterwards that information technology drops downward to less than 50%.

"But that's only if they didn't try to charge it or turn it on," he cautioned.

Both DryBox and TekDry charge $69.99 per telephone. They also practice car central fobs, hearing aids, fitness trackers and Telly remotes.

Though for those who can't get somewhere to have their phone professionally dried, there'south nonetheless hope. In San Francisco, Tan said he'd had people bring in phones that stopped working after being sent through a washer and didn't bring them in for six months, figuring they were dead and gone.

"Nosotros opened it upwardly, dried it, cleaned it and in a couple of cases we've got them working once again," he said.

Ocean water is a different story

Plainly h2o, or even toilet or inundation water, is bad enough. Salt water is another thing entirely, say experts. The salts in ocean water are strongly corrosive to electronics and tin can much more apace damage a telephone.

If information technology's impossible to get a phone dried out under vacuum within several days, at that place's one last-ditch trick Naumann has to offer.

"If, and only if, it was in salt water, then we recommend putting the phone in a Ziplock handbag with some bottled, purified water and just a compression of baking soda. It seems counterintuitive, just the blistering soda counteracts the corrosiveness of the salt water until you can get it cleaned out professionally," he said.

How To Dry Out A Cell Phone That Went Through The Washer,

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/08/28/your-smartphone-got-wet-heres-what-do-first/609145001/

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