The first hour decides it
The short answer
Turn it off and leave it off. Do not charge it, do not press the buttons to see if it works, and do not put it in rice. Corrosion begins immediately and never stops on its own, so the sooner it is opened and cleaned, the more of the phone survives.
The order that matters
- Get it out and power it offIf it is still on, shut it down properly if you can, and hold the power button if you cannot. Current flowing through wet circuitry is what causes most of the permanent damage.
- Do not plug it inNot to charge, not to check, not to get the data off. This is the single most common thing that turns a recoverable phone into a board repair.
- Take out what comes outSIM tray, memory card, case. Leave the screws and the back where they are.
- Dry the outside and let it drainWipe it, then stand it on edge on a towel, ports downward, so gravity helps. Do not shake it hard; that moves water into places it had not reached.
- Rinse it if it was not clean waterSalt, chlorine, sugar and coffee are all far more aggressive than tap water. A brief rinse in clean fresh water is genuinely better than leaving the residue in.
- Bring it in the same day if you canEvery hour is corrosion time. Same day is much better than next week, and next week is much better than never.
Why rice does not work
Rice is hygroscopic in the sense that it absorbs moisture from air, slowly, from the surface it touches. A phone is a sealed box with liquid trapped inside it against a circuit board. Rice cannot reach any of that.
What it does do is hold the phone in a warm, humid, enclosed environment for a day or two, which is close to ideal conditions for corrosion, while giving the owner a reason not to do the thing that would actually help. It also deposits starch dust in the ports.
The myth persists because phones sometimes work after rice. They work despite it, because they would have dried out anyway, and they very often fail weeks later when the corrosion catches up.
The same applies to silica gel packets, uncooked pasta, cat litter and every other pantry remedy. None of them can reach the water that matters.
Why heat is worse than useless
A hair dryer, a radiator or an airing cupboard pushes warm air over the outside of a sealed device. Inside, it raises the temperature of a wet board, and warmth accelerates every corrosion reaction happening on it.
Hot air also drives moisture further in as it moves through the phone rather than out of it, and on a screen it can soften the adhesive holding the display, which introduces a second problem.
Room temperature, ports downward, and off, is genuinely the best home treatment there is. It is not much, and being honest that it is not much is more useful than confidence about rice.
What we actually do with a wet phone
Open it, get the battery disconnected, and see what is happening. Then clean the board properly, which means removing the shields and treating the corrosion under them rather than the visible part, because the visible part is never all of it.
Assess rather than quote first. Nobody can see inside a wet phone from a counter, and a price given before it is opened would be a guess. The assessment fee comes off the repair if you go ahead.
And ask you, before we start, whether the phone or the data on it is the priority. Those are sometimes different routes, and doing them in the wrong order can cost you both.
If it happened weeks ago
Still worth bringing in. Phones arrive here working weeks after a soaking and are still recoverable, and a phone that has started restarting or losing a speaker a fortnight later is showing exactly the delayed corrosion this page describes.
Tell us when it happened. It genuinely changes where we look first, and a phone whose owner mentions a spilled pint three weeks ago gets assessed differently from one that simply will not turn on.
Common questions.
No. Rice cannot reach liquid sealed inside a phone; it just holds the device somewhere warm and humid, which is close to ideal for corrosion. Turn the phone off, leave it off, and bring it in.
No, and this is the one to get right. Current through a wet board causes most of the permanent damage, and charging a corroded port makes the port worse at the same time.
Very. Salt water is far more conductive and far more corrosive than fresh, so the window before permanent damage is much shorter. Rinse it briefly in clean fresh water and treat it as urgent.
Yes. Corrosion started when the water did and does not stop on its own. Phones that seem fine often fail one to three weeks later, and having it opened and cleaned now is what prevents that.
No. Liquid damage is assessed before it is quoted, because nobody can see inside a wet phone from a counter, and the assessment fee comes off the repair if you go ahead. No fix, no fee.
Where this leads.
Next in water and physical damage.
Something actually broken? Bring it in.
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