Stop putting your wet iPhone in rice, says Apple. Here’s what to do instead

sbv@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.world – 126 points – Stop putting your wet iPhone in rice, says Apple. Here’s what to do instead
theguardian.com

What you should not do:

Experts have for years pointed out that’s a bad idea – and now Apple is officially warning users not to do it.

“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” the company says in a recent support note spotted by Macworld. Along with the risk of damage, testing has suggested uncooked rice is not particularly effective at drying the device.

What you should do:

If your phone isn’t functioning at all, turn it off right away and don’t press any buttons. The next steps depend on your specific circumstances, but broadly speaking: dry it with a towel and put it in an airtight container packed with silica packets if you have them. Don’t charge it until you’re sure it’s dry.

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Stop putting your wet iPhone in rice, says Apple. Instead buy a new one because we make repairing it artificially expensive by restricting the manufactures from selling parts and we just replace the whole motherboard every time!

Last I heard Apple won't even do out of warranty repair work if the device is water damaged. They just tell you to buy a new one.

Now I feel silly for eating all those packets

You should! They're meant to be crushed and snorted.

Just pick up one of these:

Oxygen absorber absorbs oxygen but not air or moisture whereas silica gel absorb moisture. Therefore, oxygen absorber is recommended if we want to maintain the level of humidity in the packaging and extend the freshness of food product.

Haha yeah right. That's just what big silica wants you to think.

Given that iPhones have had at least IP67 rating since 2016, you probably just want to dry it off and move on.

The problem is rice getting jammed in the usb port when the phone refuses to charge with a warning the port is too wet to charge

Everyone knows the appropriate solution is drying the device in your microwave.
-brought to you by terrible advice duck or whatever

Wasn't there something with the iphone 5 where people thought they could charge it in the microwave?

I was almost convinced the answer was going to be "buy a new iphone"

But silica packets stop doing anything once they've absorbed moisture, and so aren't reusable once they've been exposed to normal air moisture. (Unless you've baked them to reactivate them). Is that not right? Because basically no one has a box full of re-baked silica packets hanging around ready for emergency usage.

Hey it's me. I'm the guy with a bunch of bags of re-baked silica packets. I'm sure I'm in a minority, though.

I have 1kg of silica beads I reuse all the time.

there are dozens of us...DOZENS!

What do you use them for?

Keeping things dry. Mostly electronics and machine parts.

But, dry from what? How often are your electronics encountering a meaningful amount of moisture?

I mean... dry from... water. And often enough that I have many bags of silica packets that I reuse. Obviously.

edit: I spend a lot of time outdoors. My gear tends to suffer if I use it and then don't dry it before I put it away. I dont enjoy taking out some gear to use only to find it corroded or molded. Silica helps that. And for my needs, it is cheaper to reuse silica packs than it is to buy and run a(nother) dehumidifier.

I have like a gallon bucket of the stuff right now, Mind you its for drying out filament (3d printer), but if you are near and got a wet phone, look me up.

For years, I've saved every silica packet in a coffee can. I stopped a while ago since I have a liter of them and the can is full.

Works great for drying things out.

I realize this is the advice in the article but wanted to point out that they build up quickly and come in just about everything that isn't food these days.

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How exactly do small particles of rice damage a cell phone? I can't think of any realistic way for that to happen

The same way the water does; by causing shorts.

Except that rice is an insulator and has no physical way to get to anything electrical to begin with.

It's not necessarily the rice itself doing anything, but dirt and particulates on the rice which are conductive and small enough to get inside the device.

If your phone is wet, then it’s already been soaked in a conductive material. Putting it in a bowl of dry rice isn’t going to hurt anything.

Water will dry; dirt and shit won't evaporate if it gets inside the device.

What sort of conductive dirt are we talking about?

Do you believe that dirt is made up of a single substance? There are salts and metals in dirt.

Salts are not conductive when dry. There are no metals in metallic form in soil.

There are no metals in metallic form in soil.

There certainly is in small little pieces that have been pulverized from various shit like erosion. Run a magnet through some dirt and watch it pick up tiny bits of iron.

That is not iron, it is the mineral magnetite. Iron quickly rusts away and that rust is not really magnetic.

Rice absorbs moisture. The moisture might make it more conductive.

  1. Does rice actually absorb moisture (is hygroscopic)? Why can I store it on an open container and nothing happens?
  2. So it is water then, as before, not the rice?

I found if the car is nearby, place the wet phone over the windscreen de-mister vent and then run the aircon through that vent. Doesn't have to be hot air to dry it as long as the compressor for the aircon is running... Aircon dries out the air before blowing it through the cabin so you will have bone dry air circulating around the phone pulling the moisture out by evaporation. About 10 mins is plenty. Best done idling in the shade. Don't want to sun damage the phone while trying dry it out...

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I have been putting the rice in the phone. That must have been the problem.

Good thing I have just as many silica packets lying around as I do rice…

I've kinda figured out from YouTube repair videos Immediately disconnecting the battery then using pure alcohol and cleaning the components is probably the best solution.

Unfortunately by the stage I could even open my phone and remove the battery it would probably be wrecked anyway by my attempt to do so.

Wouldn't salt be better anyway?

If they were to recommend it, I'm sure there would be people who would end up breading it with salt.

Here, restaurants sometimes (honestly pretty rare) put rice in the salt dispensers to keep the salt dry, so I doubt salt is great at that.

Salt absorbs water, and then it does something called caking. Which means it glues into large clumps of crystal when wet then dried, instead of reverting to tiny cubes. The idea of the rice has nothing to do with moisture but to prevent the clumps after the salt dries with a physical barrier. If you shake it in place after it dries, the rice also mechanically break the lumps. It's an old restaurant trick because they use commercial table salt, which is specifically made for and restaurants has no anticaking agents (usually some form of silicate) and no iodine, so it's taste is not metallic. That's how all salt used to be. But modern household table salt does include it, and as result doesn't cake and it remains granular no matter the moist.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

No matter how your phone gets soaked – you’re caught in a downpour, you drop it in the bath or you fall in a pool – perhaps the best-known folk remedy is to put the device in a bag of rice.

Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” the company says in a recent support note spotted by Macworld.

Along with the risk of damage, testing has suggested uncooked rice is not particularly effective at drying the device.

The fix may have its origins in the history of photography: the Verge traces the method back as far as 1946 as a way to maintain your camera.

The next steps depend on your specific circumstances, but broadly speaking: dry it with a towel and put it in an airtight container packed with silica packets if you have them.

There are a few more instructions for iPhones dropped in water that are worth memorizing – because even if many of today’s phones are water-resistant, liquid disaster has a way of sneaking up on you.

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I used to buy these microwavable things (like a tiny cushion, has a patch on it that changes colour and you microwave to reset it) to dehumidify a certain window in my house. Wonder if they would work.

They do! Fun fact you can also microwave regular desiccant packets to reuse them repeatedly.