Does uncooked rice remove moisture from a wet phone? Here’s what you need to know!

Your phone took a tumble on the sidewalk countless times without you batting an eye. Yet, the thought of it dropping accidentally in the swimming pool or any other deep body of water makes you shudder. The unfortunates who have faced this problem are often advised by family and friends to put their recently submerged phone in a box full of uncooked rice.      

But here is the question: does the cereal treatment really work? We tried the routine ourselves and the results are far from satisfactory. 

We used uncooked Basmati rice easily available in Indian markets for this adsorption experiment. The Asian staple was unable to soak in all the water droplets from an IP68-rated phone that was kept under water. After 13 hours, we realized that sticking your smartphone into the uncooked rice should ideally be  the last stage of the phone-drying process. 

Here’s how the procedure should actually go:

1. Disassemble your phone, remove the memory card(s) and SIM card(s)
2. Give the phone a light shake and a few turns to let out the excess water 
3. Wipe off all the water droplets and wetness off the battery and the innermost corners of the phone, using a swab of cotton. Avoid using a rough towel.  
4. Immerse the phone in rice so the rest of the moisture is evaporated     

Remember, you will need patience. A lot of people resort to reckless moves like putting the phone in a tumble dryer to suck out the water droplets in the phone. Others use the heat of a hair dryer, or let out the device in the sunlight for hours. Such ‘speed hacks’ will leave the components of your phone more damaged than before. 

There’s an improvement to this method of using a catalyst to speed up water evaporation. Instead of using rice, some netizens of the world wide web are use silica gel, which is a better desiccant and adsorbs water droplets faster than rice. 

Please note that the entire course of action is still an ‘attempt’ to get the liquid-damaged smartphone working and not a sure-shot resolution to the damage done by the water. This could work well if you’re lucky and the water has magically missed critical components of the phone, avoiding short circuit of the entire system.    

In case you’re unlucky, the dead phone can be sold to third-party services that buy phones for their internal parts. If redemption of your smartphone still looks possible, give GoEasyRepair a call!