How to save your phone from water damage

With the monsoon almost here, keeping your expensive gadgets away from water is first priority. You would spend a little extra to get a watertight cover or a plastic bag for your phone.

Well, preventing it from water is the best one can do to save it from water. However, during heavy showers, there are chances when your phone could be exposed to rain water. On the other hand, there are possibilities when you accidentally drop your phone in puddle or similar incidences at home.

What would you do in cases when you have water entering into your phone? If you have insurance, you could replace it. Phones under warranty are rejected by the service center for water damage. In any case, you will lose your data completely as they would not entertain data recovery.

Here are a few tips, using which, you can try to rescue your phone.

• When you witness water damage (drop a phone or gadget in water), the first thing you should do is immediately take the phone out of the water, open the rear panel and remove the battery, SIM and memory card from inside. If you phone has a non-removable battery, switch off the phone immediately and open all the ports it has and drain out any water would have entered. Keeping the phone on during this time could permanently damage the internal circuitry due to a short-circuit.

• Wipe the entire phone with a dry towel or cotton cloth. Ensure you get as much as the water out of the phone, wherever inside and completely outside.
• Jerk the phone a few times to help remove any water that could have settled in any of the insides and corners. Jerk it as many times as you can. If you have a screw driver, you can also try to open up the panels as far as you can manage it. This will increase your chances of reviving the phone. If you are a techie, you could also dismantle the entire phone—display, motherboard and other components for a higher chance.  
• Wipe again with a dry towel.
• If you have a powerful blower (a compressed air can or a vacuum cleaner), preferably with a nozzle, try to blow out any possible water droplets from inside the phone. Be careful here since you could also blow water deeper inside the phone if your phone has a non-removable battery.  You may skip this step too.

• You have taken almost all steps to try to revive your wet phone or gadget. However, this will take time, plenty of time. Now that the phone is dunked in rice, we advise you to keep the phone in the container for at least a few days—a week is best. This will ensure that the moisture is completely absorbed by the rice.

• If you are a techie, you should try this method, which worked well with me when I had almost lost my Samsung Galaxy S3 to water damage.

I opened up the phone completely—took apart all the components, which include the motherboard, display, speakers, and whatever I could take apart. Next I took a tray filled it with isopropyl alcohol and dunked the battery, motherboard and all components of the phone (except the display unit) for a few minutes, in the liquid. Then I removed the components and set them aside to dry for a few hours. After assembling the phone back again, I successfully managed to revive the phone entirely.

If you have any other techniques to rescue a wet phone, or you have your version of how you rescued your phone, why don’t you share it with us in the comments below?