Everyone enjoys a good little life hack. Finding out you can use lemon juice to remove highlighter marks is a neat thing to know even if you don’t really use the highlighter that much.
As you know though, some people have made it a career of providing silly little life hacks like those. The only problem is that they ran out of cool hacks years ago and now throw around weird stuff that no one would really find useful.
I recently saw one say, “If you put your wipers up, parking inspectors are unable to give you a ticket.” That’s stupid and is most probably just a joke.
Phones in rice
Which takes us to one tech life hack that’s been spread around for decades now – put your phone in a bag of uncooked rice if it gets wet.
Thankfully, most flagship phones now have some water resistance and will survive a quick dip. Unfortunately, water resistance is not really guaranteed in midrange and budget phones and also on flagships that have been dropped and have their chassis compromised.
So, the rice life hack remains relevant. If only it were useful. Yes, despite the hack spreading all over the globe, it’s not really an accurate hack.
The theory is that the rice will absorb the water from the phone. You know those little packets that come in some boxes with electronics, or even in shoes? Those are called desiccants and they absorb the humidity and moisture in the air to maintain a moisture-free environment.
It was believed that rice had a similar effect. However, that’s not true. Which, if you think about it, is clear as day, rice is not known for absorbing moisture. We can agree that bread would be better suited for that.
That’s not to say use bread instead of rice to dry your wet phone. Rather let’s look at Apple’s advice on what to do.
Apple’s support documents
This whole phone in rice conversation was resurrected when Macworld stumbled upon Apple’s advice on what to do with wet phones in their support pages.
The context is Apple is telling users what to do if they see a liquid-detection alert.
Don’t plug the cable in again until your iPhone and the cable are completely dry.
Dry your iPhone:
- Tap your iPhone gently against your hand with the connector facing down to remove excess liquid. Leave your iPhone in a dry area with some airflow.
- After at least 30 minutes, try charging with a Lightning or USB-C cable or connecting an accessory.
- If you see the alert again, there is still liquid in the connector or under the pins of your cable. Leave your iPhone in a dry area with some airflow for up to a day. You can try again to charge or connect an accessory throughout this period. It might take up to 24 hours to fully dry.
Here are a few things not to do:
- Don’t dry your iPhone using an external heat source or compressed air.
- Don’t insert a foreign object, such as a cotton swab or a paper towel, into the connector.
- Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone.
Ah, it’s right there in black and white, “Don’t put your phone in a bag of rice.” Turns out it’s not just a waste of time, it could actually damage your device if small rice particles sneak their way into your device.
So, not only is rice not absorbent, it has the potential to damage your device. And to think so many phones have been dunked into rice over the years. What’s crazy is that device manufacturers have always maintained that the rice hack was stupid.
The internet has always disregarded that advice. Why? – there are so many testimonials that it works that are out there, they can’t be ignored.
Apparently, you end up thinking the rice worked when what saved your device was you leaving it alone for a while. You are not tempted to keep trying to power on the device or plug it in when it’s being ‘healed’ by the rice.
So, when Apple says it might take 24 hours for your phone to fully dry and you leave yours in rice for 24 hours as the advice goes, it’s the length of time you left the phone untouched that saved it.
The rice actually worked to reduce the airflow hitting your device whilst potentially dumping small particles into your phone’s innards.
Just leave it alone
You don’t need to knock on your neighbours door if you falls takes a dip and you’re out of rice. Just set it aside for about a day where there is good airflow.
Don’t stick towels, tissue paper, cloths, cotton swabs in to try and dry it out. That could leave particles like the rice too. The most is tap your phone to get rid of excess water.
Don’t be tempted to use the hair dryer to speed up the process. You messed up and dunked your phone, you need a time out. Your phone needs 24 hours away from your grubby little hands.
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