Quick, put your wet phone in a bag of rice so it can absorb the moisture! This is one tech advice that just refuses to die out, even though it doesn’t really work.
Now, hopefully, with Apple taking an official stand against this urban myth, maybe we can put this practice to rest.
The popular wisdom is that rice absorbs moisture and it could pull out the water that got inside the tiny crevices of a smartphone. However, it could also block your phone with dirt particles.
“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” says the explanation now given by an official Apple page.
This also means that rice would likely keep water in, as it blocks those cracks and, implicitly, stops water from evaporating.
As someone who has dunked most of their phones at one point or another, I can definitely confirm this. I put three phones in rice bags so far and they dried slower, over multiple days, while the phones that I left near a fan or an open window worked ok the very next day.
Still, Apple says you should wait at least 30 minutes before connecting a charger to your iPhone that got wet. I would humbly advise you to wait at least a day, if possible. You want to absolutely totally minimize the chances that minuscule traces of water will lead to a short circuit. It’s a hassle, I know, but one that could actually save your expensive iPhone.
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