Everyone enjoys a good little life hack. Finding out you can use lemon juice to remove highlighter marks is a neat thing to know even if you don’t really use the highlighter that much.
As you know though, some people have made it a career of providing silly little life hacks like those. The only problem is that they ran out of cool hacks years ago and now throw around weird stuff that no one would really find useful.
I recently saw one say, “If you put your wipers up, parking inspectors are unable to give you a ticket.” That’s stupid and is most probably just a joke.
Phones in rice
Which takes us to one tech life hack that’s been spread around for decades now – put your phone in a bag of uncooked rice if it gets wet.
Thankfully, most flagship phones now have some water resistance and will survive a quick dip. Unfortunately, water resistance is not really guaranteed in midrange and budget phones and also on flagships that have been dropped and have their chassis compromised.
So, the rice life hack remains relevant. If only it were useful. Yes, despite the hack spreading all over the globe, it’s not really an accurate hack.
The theory is that the rice will absorb the water from the phone. You know those little packets that come in some boxes with electronics, or even in shoes? Those are called desiccants and they absorb the humidity and moisture in the air to maintain a moisture-free environment.
It was believed that rice had a similar effect. However, that’s not true. Which, if you think about it, is clear as day, rice is not known for absorbing moisture. We can agree that bread would be better suited for that.
That’s not to say use bread instead of rice to dry your wet phone. Rather let’s look at Apple’s advice on what to do.
Apple’s support documents
This whole phone in rice conversation was resurrected when Macworld stumbled upon Apple’s advice on what to do with wet phones in their support pages.
The context is Apple is telling users what to do if they see a liquid-detection alert.
Don’t plug the cable in again until your iPhone and the cable are completely dry.
Dry your iPhone:
- Tap your iPhone gently against your hand with the connector facing down to remove excess liquid. Leave your iPhone in a dry area with some airflow.
- After at least 30 minutes, try charging with a Lightning or USB-C cable or connecting an accessory.
- If you see the alert again, there is still liquid in the connector or under the pins of your cable. Leave your iPhone in a dry area with some airflow for up to a day. You can try again to charge or connect an accessory throughout this period. It might take up to 24 hours to fully dry.
Here are a few things not to do:
- Don’t dry your iPhone using an external heat source or compressed air.
- Don’t insert a foreign object, such as a cotton swab or a paper towel, into the connector.
- Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone.
Ah, it’s right there in black and white, “Don’t put your phone in a bag of rice.” Turns out it’s not just a waste of time, it could actually damage your device if small rice particles sneak their way into your device.
So, not only is rice not absorbent, it has the potential to damage your device. And to think so many phones have been dunked into rice over the years. What’s crazy is that device manufacturers have always maintained that the rice hack was stupid.
The internet has always disregarded that advice. Why? – there are so many testimonials that it works that are out there, they can’t be ignored.
Apparently, you end up thinking the rice worked when what saved your device was you leaving it alone for a while. You are not tempted to keep trying to power on the device or plug it in when it’s being ‘healed’ by the rice.
So, when Apple says it might take 24 hours for your phone to fully dry and you leave yours in rice for 24 hours as the advice goes, it’s the length of time you left the phone untouched that saved it.
The rice actually worked to reduce the airflow hitting your device whilst potentially dumping small particles into your phone’s innards.
Just leave it alone
You don’t need to knock on your neighbours door if you falls takes a dip and you’re out of rice. Just set it aside for about a day where there is good airflow.
Don’t stick towels, tissue paper, cloths, cotton swabs in to try and dry it out. That could leave particles like the rice too. The most is tap your phone to get rid of excess water.
Don’t be tempted to use the hair dryer to speed up the process. You messed up and dunked your phone, you need a time out. Your phone needs 24 hours away from your grubby little hands.
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17 comments
Is it recommended to nano coat your phone as well?
No! I refuse! I have faith in rice! It saved me in a moment of hydro cellular despair and fed me after!!! It can’t have all been a lie, a random cosmic coincidence!!!! No no no!
Pataurwa zve iphone hapana kutaurwa zve android
😂 siyana nevanhu
Last month I found my Intel S23 submerged in water,after I had accidentally left a tap open which resulted in the whole house flooding. It was probably submerged for at least an hour whilst charging. I removed it from the charger and dried it making sure that there wasn’t any water in the charging port.After an hour I switched it on and it just worked as usual.Its still working perfectly and I didn’t even have to use rice.
The Apple post you just quoted talked about the danger of rice particles entering your phone and damaging it. It did not at all refute the fact that rice has an affinity for water. Those are two different things and you should not disregard one because of the other
Last month I found my Intel S23 submerged in water,after I had accidentally left a tap open which resulted in the whole house flooding. It was probably submerged for at least an hour whilst charging. I removed it from the charger and dried it making sure that there wasn’t any water in the charging port.After an hour I switched it on and it just worked as usual.Its still working perfectly and I didn’t even have to use rice.
Well, you may have to consider that the “rice theory” began long before smartphones. There once upon a time were feature phones (mbudzi), & should a mbudzi be submerged in water, one would remove the battery, then put the feature phone, without a battery in rice. The question here is, does rice absorb moisture, & the anawer is it probably does. Now Apple, having never ever made a feature phone, made smartphones with fixed batteries, from the very beginning.
With that in mind, you can see how rice may not be a very useful way to absorb moisture, I mean the device is sealed all the way round.
The rice theory predates Apple making phones, & for devices with removable back covers and batteries, I think the rice theory holds. For these modern sealed phones, maybe not so much.
Apple should just tell us to put the iPhone into a bag of apples if it gets a water baptism as no apple will enter any or the iPhones orifices to suck the water and stay in for good, affecting the iPhone’s health
Guys I want to highlight the extent of the demise of Telecel Zimbabwe and its website has not appeared on google for more than a month and checked on website planet to confirm all those times and unfortunately it is no longer available and for a company of Telecel Zimbabwe’s stature it only goes to show the dwindling of the company.Imagine the thirg biggest MNO in Zimbabwe is not available on the internet only on twitter and Facebook. We are talking of a company that once commanded over 30% of all network and Voice subscribers. Most of the shops are now closing and dilapidated.i saw imwe in joina yakutotengeswa hembe and still contains the telecel branding.#save telecel zimbabwe. I am David Junior Mhambare and you can reference me if you write such a story and I am a web developer and IOT fanatic. Mismanagemt and i believe it can still turnaround like Telone when Chipo Mtasa entered the fold
Guys I want to highlight the extent of the demise of Telecel Zimbabwe and its website has not appeared on google for more than a month and checked on website planet to confirm all those times and unfortunately it is no longer available and for a company of Telecel Zimbabwe’s stature it only goes to show the dwindling of the company.Imagine the thirg biggest MNO in Zimbabwe is not available on the internet only on twitter and Facebook. We are talking of a company that once commanded over 30% of all network and Voice subscribers. Most of the shops are now closing and dilapidated.i saw imwe in joina yakutotengeswa hembe and still contains the telecel branding.#save telecel zimbabwe. I am David Junior Mhambare and you can reference me if you write such a story and I am a web developer and IOT fanatic. Mismanagemt and i believe it can still turnaround like Telone when Chipo Mtasa entered the fold. Make an article about it
I feel your pain.. sadly telecel themselves are not inovative enough to compete..utande is now doing better and it was a simple start up
Usadherera madhara ematumbu those guys are lethal at breaking things.
Modern iphones are waterproof though…
‘Water resistant’. There are still circumstances where they can get liquid damage.
The rice hack only works if you borrow it from your neighbours with an ulterior motive of cooking it.
😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁