Steps to Save Your Phone If You Drop It In Water

Steps to Save Your Phone If You Drop It In Water

Nowadays, we carry our phones with us everywhere we go, and some of us have dropped a cell phone into the water a couple of times. Saltwater is worse than tap, toilet, or flood water. It is another thing that can damage your phone quickly because the salts in water are strongly corrosive to electronics.

So what are the first steps to do after you take your phone out of water?

The most important thing is you should act fast.

Relevant article: How to Save a Laptop After a Liquid Spill

 

Don’ts or the Main mistakes.

  • Don’t put in rice. Even though it is the most common suggestion, but isn’t the solution. That doesn’t work and can introduce dust and starch into the phone, while the moisture in your phone corrodes your phone’s circuit board.

  • Don’t leave your soaked phone in the sun, because water can cause rust inside your phone.

  • Don’t turn it on or charge. What kills a wet phone is electricity. Do not charge it nor turn it on to see if it works. Otherwise, the electricity will touch the water inside, and that’s when the motherboard gets shorted. This is also true even if your phone is still working after it was dropped in water.

  • Don’t use a hairdryer to dry your phone, because it may cause more damage by overheating or can push the water further inside your phone.

  • Don’t keep using it as nothing happened. The circuit boards will slowly corrode, which eventually makes the phone repair as expensive as buying a new phone. Also, the data recovery part will be an extra headache.

    Sometimes it takes a while for the water to reach sensitive connections inside the phone. Don’t be surprised if your swamped phone’s screen, microphone, speakers, or touchscreen stops working within the following few days.

    Your device can begin corroding after the water reaches the internal circuitry. Even if the water has dried, the impurities can be left behind the surface of your phone and still cause damage. This is why we recommend you to take it to professionals asap.

 

Steps to save your phone from liquid damage.

  • The first thing is to turn your phone off, remove the SIM card, and hold it upright. You can temporarily put your sim-card in another phone and ask your friends if you don’t have one.

  • Dry your phone with a paper towel or cloth.

  • If it’s an older phone, open the back panel and disconnect the battery.

  • If it’s a new phone, check the seller’s or manufacturer’s warranty. If your phone is covered, you probably can get it repaired or replaced at little to no cost.

  • Otherwise, take it to a phone repair shop.

 

Prevent the water damage.

  • If you’re walking through the rain or in a splash zone, try to keep charging port, headphone jack, and phone speakers covered.

  • It’s suggested to leave your phone a safe distance away when you’re at the beach, swimming in the pool, or taking a dip in the bathtub. Consider a Bluetooth speaker, wireless headphones like AirPods, or galaxy buds.

  • Also be careful when you take your phone with you to the bathroom, because there are many cases when phones accidentally jump into the toilet.

  • So the best way to prevent your phone from water damage is avoiding bringing it to “high risk” areas.

 

Use water resistant cases.

If you want to protect your phone from water damage in the future, you can purchase a waterproof phone case. There are so many good options you can buy from stores, on eBay or Amazon.

 

Waterproof and water resistant phones.

Be aware when phone manufacturers say their phone is waterproof or water-resistant. It only applies under a special set of circumstances. A phone’s water resistance depends on the depth of submersion, the length of time for which it is submerged, and the clarity of the water.

New models are offering stronger defense against the water. Still, we wouldn’t advise you testing your smartphone’s water resistance by putting it into the water or throwing it in the pool. No matter how smart your phone is, it doesn’t know how to swim.