So, you’ve dropped your phone in water and now it’s soaked. Nightmare. Everything’s on there. Your contacts, your schedule, 3,264 photos of your cat sleeping. What you should do as soon as possible is put it in a bag or bowl of rice to soak up the water, right?
Wrong.
In fact, experts have been warning for a long time that it doesn’t work with tech reporter Michael Zelenko reporting way back in 2015 that while the trick did work for a while after his phone got soaked, within weeks it was unresponsive, sluggish and eventually stopped working.
Now Apple has officially announced that no, we shouldn’t be using rice.
Apple’s warning against using rice for drying phones
In a release on the Apple website, the tech giants warned that, once the phone has given a ‘liquid detection’ warning, it’s important that users don’t then try to charge the phone unless it’s an emergency, in which case the warning can be overridden.
They then went on to say that if your phone is wet, you shouldn’t try to dry it using compressed air, by inserting a foreign object such as a cotton bud or paper towel or, crucially, rice, as it, “could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone.”
Instead, they recommend the following steps:
- 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 using 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 place with some airflow for up to a day. You can try again to charge or connect an accessory throughout this period. It may take up to 24 hours to dry fully
- If your phone has dried out but still isn’t charging, unplug the cable from the adapter and unplug the adapter from the wall (if possible) and then connect them again
Basically, put that bag of rice right back where you found it.