Many people have said that when you drop your cell phone, PDA, Nikon S230 in a ziplock bag, computer, television, A/S 400, etc into the toilet or Potomac River or some other kind of watery death trap that if you leave it in a bowl of dry rice for several days it will come out working like a champ. Is there any truth to this? I know rice is absorbent, but i am not able to wrap my head around the idea that rice can just pull water from the inside of a plastic case for a digital camera or something and all will be well.
I feel like arguing that if you put said device in a bowl of air, and leave it for several days, the device has the same chances of surviving. I have no proof. Other people have the i’ve-done-it-myself-and-it-works-everytime “proof” and you just know there is NO WAY to ignore those facts:dubious:
Sure it works, as any desiccant works, but it may not save the electronics item. It’s not a magic bullet, but it will absorb moisture from a sealed environment.
The rice absorbs (or maybe adsorbs, I forget) water vapor from the air, which changes the relative humidity. The drier air is better able to hold any water vapor which is escaping from the liquid water trapped inside the device. Cycle repeats until a new equilibrium is established, hopefully on the no-water-in-your-device side of the equation.
Or not. Simply drying out any item is good, but doesn’t guarantee that the item will work again. There are many ways for electronics to fail. Something cleaner than rice (like packaged desiccant) may work better if you can find it.
Ever open up a new electronic device or a sealed (legal) drug and found a little capsule or packet that says “do not eat” on it? That’s a desiccant that is put into the package to absorb moisture and prevent failure due to moisture or to lengthen the shelf life. Rice acts the same way on an electronic device that has accidentally been submerged. The (cheap) dry rice absorbs the available moisture.
It’s not a cure all but it is the first, best defense to save a device that would otherwise be toast. I’ve tried the cure and it has worked, but not always. It won’t do any harm.
Another method is to dunk it in alcohol. The alcohol displaces the water, but then evaporates much quicker so that it doesn’t itself cause the same problems.
As noted, there are better desiccants available than rice. Powdered rice absorbs water and ends up sticky, so is not the best choice for electronic devices.
Silica gel is probably best (the desiccant supplied with many electronics), and can be recharged by gentle heating in a warm (but not on) oven. Cotton wool is also (apparently) very good, with no dust problems.
First - as fast as you can, remove the battery from the device - water + power is the killer. Remove all add-in cards and open all slot covers. Leave the phone back open. Place the phone in a baggie with desiccant, and place somewhere warm (like an airing cupboard).
Leave for a week before you even look at the phone. Shake it all about. If any water is still inside, leave until it is dry. Do not reinsert the battery until you a confident that it is completely dry
you will have trouble finding 100% alcohol. ethyl alcohol is usually sold containing water. alcohols and water do mix so there is no displacement, as in one replaces the other, they will mix. alcohols other than ethyl may harm your object but so might ethyl alcohol.
Isopropyl alcohol is the usual alcohol of choice for electronic devices. However, it may damage covers and rubber seals, so YMMV.
To be honest, I am getting more and more ticked off with the whole personal electronics and water issue. There are now coatings that can protect circuit boards from water, and rethinking/redesigning external contact technology (like the mac magnetic power connector) could easily deliver a phone that is at least dunk proof without a major cost hike.
I am leaning on believing there is a water fuse built into cell phones and such.
like a sugar cube that softens and opens up the circuitry!
20 years ago when we got our 1st motorola pagers, they could be dryed out after a night under water by putting it in a cooling oven.
Nowadays a water balloon hitting the pocket the phone is in will ruin it:mad:.
Ya my spare phone was passed to my grandson just for that reason last week!
You have to wonder if the susceptibility to water damage is by design. Watches have been water resistant for decades. They have buttons and a crown that penetrate the case. Yet, it doesn’t take much water exposure to ruin a perfectly good cell phone. Same thing with digital cameras.
I have the camera hanging in front of the exhaust fan on my computer. I’ll see if i can find a baggy of silica gel somewhere and toss them into a ziplock bag, even though my luck with ziplocks ran out over the weekend.
It probably does. Rice will act as a mild desiccant, but it’s not going to work miracles. If you accidentally dunk a phone it will often survive, whether you stick it in rice or not. The rice really isn’t going to do much unless you happen to live in a particularly humid area.
You’ll never convince people of this, though. Some guy dunks his phone, sticks it in rice, and afterwards, the phone works! Aha! Must have been the rice! It probably would have survived just as well without the rice, but because he did something and it worked, obviously the something was responsible. Often, sticking the phone on top of a shrine to the flying spaghetti monster on your kitchen counter is just as effective.
As si_blakely said, the most important thing is that you take the battery out. The thing that kills the phone isn’t the water, it’s water + electricity. If power is removed, I can’t think of anything in a typical cell phone that would be damaged just by water alone.
What about a digital camera? The Nikon S230 has a touchscreen, i was able to capillary action the water out with a tissue though, but would the CCD be destroyed?
And just ftr, the battery was in for several minutes while the camera was bathing. Hence my hopelessness.
Probably not, as long as you didn’t run electricity through it while it was wet. Electronics can tolerate getting wet as long as there’s no power. Cameras have come back from the dead.
