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The Eastern Echo Thursday, June 19, 2025 | Print Archive
The Eastern Echo

Gadget saving tips

Have you ever accidentally dropped your phone in the sink? Maybe a MP3 player happened to fall out of your pocket into a puddle?

Nowadays our pocket-sized gadgets are essential to get by in the world, but they are not accident-proof. Here are a few tips to get your electronics up-and-running when those accidents happen.

The main idea in saving a device from water damage is to immediately take out the battery; this stops it from frying and will turn off the device so it isn’t running while being damaged, which could lead to short circuiting.

Most phones have something on the back — usually a plain sticker or slot that will change a certain color — that will prove whether or not you have water damage. This way, a store owner can know if the damage was your fault when you try to exchange.

Before trying to contact the company or spend money on a new phone, there are some good home remedies said to work. Your mileage might vary; these are simply just myths that have proved well for some and not so well for others.

One common theory is taking apart your device, filling a bowl up with plain, uncooked rice and putting the pieces of your phone inside it for several hours — or even days. It’s said that since rice soaks up water, it might soak damaging water out of the phone. This method is not a guarantee, but it has been proven to work for others.

However, this doesn’t stop the phone from getting internal damage and slowly eroding; the rice just delays the “death” of your phone.

Unfortunately, MP3 players aren’t designed to be taken apart, but you can always try setting it in a bowl of rice for a while; it wouldn’t hurt any more than the water already has.

Other remedies aren’t very well known and can be considered somewhat strange. For instance, taking your device and putting it into a container of alcohol, then leaving it out to dry for a bit is said to be an effective but not a complete safe way to get your device to start working again.

One could try using a hairdryer to try and dry out the device, but if you hold the dryer too close for too long to a certain part on the phone it could melt or overheat.

There are even products out now such as the “Bheestie Bag,” – a bag designed to put a phone in when wet – and has been known to be priced around $20. Reviewers have called it “a prepackaged solution designed to save your gear.”

There is a silica gel pack in the bag to soak up the water. However convenient this invention might be though, it wasn’t made to last for more than a few uses.

As for the Apple users, according to Apple’s support page any Apple-related warranty does not cover any water damage, and all models built after 2006 have indicators designed to show if liquid has made contact with the device. This goes for both the iPhone and the iPod.