By Damilola Olarinre
You're walking in your area on a cold evening after a downpour. You're reading the message from your friend while walking, you know you shouldn't but the gist was just too good to wait till you get home. All of a sudden, you slip and fall into a puddle and after you finally gather yourself, you find your precious phone sitting at the bottom of the puddle. The glow of the screen catches your eyes from the water as your heart bleeds for your precious phone.
Now many of us have experienced something related to or different from this scenario, but it all ends with your phone sitting in water and you confused as to what to do. Well, it's time to know what to do and what not to do if your phone falls in water.
The first and probably most obvious thing to do is to remove the phone from as soon as possible. Well are you still wondering why? It's quite simple actually. The longer the phone spends in water, the lesser its chances of survival.
Next, you have to find a way to power the phone off if it isn't already powered off. Now there are some phones with removable batteries, if your phone is one of such, remove the battery immediately, don't even think about replying that last message, just remove the battery. If your phone is one of those new ones with non-removable battery, start the shutdown process as quickly as possible.
Your phone is now powered down, so what next? Well, the next thing to do is to remove the sim card or cards as the case may be and the memory card. This is necessary because water has the capacity to corrode the terminals of your sim and memory card.
This next step is only for those with a technical knowhow. If and only if you do have a technical knowhow, well this step is for you and that is to disassemble the phone. It is however to note that disassembling your phone may void your warranty, depending on the terms stated in it. So before you disassemble your device, check and familiarize yourself with the terms. If you do not have a warranty or according to the terms, disassembling your phone will not void your warranty or you don't care about the warranty and you know how to, then you may disassemble your phone so it can dry faster and more effectively. However, if you do not know how to disassemble your phone, I wouldn't advice you do because you may be causing more harm than good. But if you're willing to take the risk risk, I wish you the best. Besides there are tutorials online on how to disassemble different phones, you just have to search for them.
The last but not the least important step is finally drying the phone. Now there are a lot of mistakes and misconceptions that affect people who are trying to dry their phone. We'll try to weed them out now. First of all, do not attempt to dry the phone with an iron, cooker, microwave or anything with direct heat. You wanna know why? The circuitry of your phone is quite delicate and that amount of direct heat will most likely damage something in your phone which you may not be aware of till you try to turn it on. Secondly, do not attempt to use a hair dryer to dry your phone. This is because the hair dryer will create a small draft of wind which may blow the moisture deeper into the phone which may damage something that wasn't originally affected.
How do I properly dry my phone then you wonder. First of all, if you can lay your hands on a vacuum cleaner, you can place the phone in front of it and turn it on the highest setting. You're probably wondering why a vacuum cleaner is okay and a hair dryer is not. This is because while the hair dryer creates a draft which pushes the water further into the phone, a vacuum cleaner creates suction which draws the water out.
Another way you can dry your phone is by putting it in a container filled with silica. But in case you can't procure silica, a good substitute would be dry uncooked rice. Both silica and rice have absorbent capabilities which would help reduce your phone's moisture content.
Yet another method of drying your phone is to place it vertically about an arm's length from a working standing fan. Do not place it under a ceiling fan because gravity and the force of the breeze impacting the phone from above will just serve to drag the moisture deeper into the phone. If you're lucky and the sun happens to be shining, you can also sun-dry the phone.
Now you feel the phone is dry enough and you can't wait to turn the phone on. HOLD YOUR HORSES!!! It is advised to leave a phone that has come in contact with liquid off for at least 24hrs to eliminate the possibility of any moisture being left in the phone. So after 24hrs, you can turn on your phone and evaluate where you stand. If the phone doesn't come on, or it does but it has some tics it didn't have before, take the phone to an experienced and certified mobile phone technician explaining what happened and the steps you have taken. In fact, it is advised that if you follow all these steps and your phone functions normally, you still take the phone to a certified technician to rule out any negative scenarios.
Photo credit: WikiHow
If you have any questions or issues you would like to be addressed, you can use the comment box or send an email to damilolaolarinre@gmail.com. Have a nice week!
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