A phone that got wet: what to do right away

The first minutes

Water, and especially toilet water or seawater, keeps doing damage while the phone is on and the battery is connected. The order matters more than any home mixture.

1. Take the phone out of the water at once. Do not shake it hard, and do not press buttons to "see if it works".
2. Turn it off. If it does not respond, hold the power button until the screen goes dark. Do not charge it.
3. Take off the case, and the SIM card if the tray opens easily. Do not force the phone apart.
4. Wipe the outside with a dry cloth. Do not use a hair dryer, an oven, or a bag of rice. Rice does not pull moisture out of the board, and its dust stays in the port.

Drying

Leave the phone off, in a dry aired place, with the charging port facing down, for at least a day. A closed bag with silica gel packets (the ones in shoe boxes) is better than rice. Do not turn it on before that time has passed, even if the outside feels dry.

When to stop at home

Salt water, pool water, and toilet water leave residue even after drying. If the screen flickers, there is a sharp smell, or the phone heats up when you plug it in, unplug it at once. In the lab we can open it, clean contacts, and see whether the battery or the screen was damaged, before charging again shorts the board.

A cloud backup, if it was on before the fall, keeps photos and contacts even when the phone itself does not come back.

More guides

• A tip about the mobile phone
• Contact the lab