[General Topics] Igoritza:
Here is a non-picture tutorial and all the explanation about extracting moisture from your water damaged phone, and it is done in a manner of a conversation between noob and Me :) -

My phone fell into water or got sprayed by some kind of liquid!! Oh noes, what do to now!

First of all - remove Battery. even though voltage of a cell phone battery is low, it is still capable of producing short circuit, which IS going to happen cause of the water present. water is a polar and why it transfers current is a topic im not going to get into - it does.

Cell battery actually has enough juice to produce a spark, so if you ever find yourself lost in the woods, and you dont know how to light a fire with a stick and dry leaves - spark from a cell phone battery is the way to go - join + and -, close to a really dry leaf, and there you go, fire :)

Now that you removed your battery, you are time-safe. meaning that your high-priced handheld device could actually spend 3 days in water, but if you dry it 100% (theoretically) - it is going to work again. (well, not 3 days, but you get the point)

My phone is now water damaged, will it work again .. ?

Probably. second step after removing battery is to remove all visible liquid cause of the potential corrosion damage. most of the modern mobile phone parts do not corrode but some of the parts are made with unique material that does.

How am I going to remove liquid from my phone ... ?

First - big drops, or amounts of water. using microfiber cloth instantly would do the biggest job. next are "medium" drops. excelent for that is - the Vacuum cleaner. he will suck what is left of bigger drops of water.

Next - is a tricky one. removing small amounts of water. water "holds itself" to a certain point, but with different forces, it could be separated more than sand. Being that your phone probably got shaken when you got it out of water, most probable case is that water found its way into parts of the phone where vacuum cleaner cant pull it out.

And that is why you DONT use hair-dryer! Not even on COLD setting. the point is, that the hair dryer is most certainly going to PUSH water further into the micro parts of your phone.

but hey Igoritza, you are full of shi*, I saw inside of a mobile service shop that dude is using hot air to remove moist!

You did saw it, but you saw it wrong :) blowing hot air inside your phone will surely cause damage. but blowing it OVER the phone could prove useful!

how?? :confused:

There is a thing called Bernoulli's principle, and without getting into how it works, the point is - a place where air or liquid MOVES, has a lower pressure than the place where it stands still. that is the reason why airplanes fly, cause the wing looks like this (side section view):

air flow meets the wing. it gets separated by the wing sharp edge, and A is longer than B, so the air going over A must move FASTER and so it produces LESS pressure than regular atmospheric pressure which gets the airplane up. actually, it is a condition: A minus B > atmospheric pressure - that gets it up.

really ??!? how the F is that going to fix my phone ??

well - blowing air OVER the device will make pressure UNDER the device higher. which would make air + liquid wanting to go into a lower pressure state (out of the phone). blowing hot air actually helps cause it makes it dryer, and thus even more pressure.

Wow, that's amazing, is it fixed ??!?

No it's not. not yet. Now we use RICE!!

balls! I tried rice in the past, and everyone on XDA say that rice doesnt help!

Rice has a property called - Hygroscopy. It is a property of a substance to hold water "between" it's molecules. Notice how rice is bigger when cooked.

yeah, but that means that I have to putt rice directly on water, for it to suck it up .. ?

No. Air is a mixture of gases, and one of them is water vapor. taking it out of the equation prompts nearby liquid water to go into gas state and thus, gets much more "mobile" and "wild" for a Rice to grab it.

That sounds awesome but then why do people say Rice is not working .. ?

Hygroscopic substance is not magical. it really needs to be CLOSE to water, so it could extract it. You could use a desiccant, or "Silica gel" found in shoes, and it SHOULD be better than rice, but the problem is that most of those Silica gel bags have already reached their absorbtion capacity, and that is why we move to our actual problem: Rice needs to be rearranged!

you mad .. ?

Yeah, Rice grain closest to moisture will be most used, in terms of reaching its own capacity. And unfortunately, Rice does not like to work together (meaning that full rice wont "pass" water to the closest one.) Rice grains are not social bunch :laugh:

so how do I use rice to take it out all ?

best way is to disassemble the unit using numerous internet tutorials - not completely, but at least back-cover of the phone (first panel with screws under the battery) and that should be pretty easy.

next, goes rice. you immerse your phone into it. Once you pull it out of the rice - you WILL SEE rice grains STUCK to certain parts of the phone - those grains did their job, they got stuck cause of the fact that they are full and on microscopic level, water that condensed on its outer surface is holding the grains stuck. now remove them from the bunch, they clenched their thirst. (it is unlikely that you will place ~15 exact grains on the moisture spots, but hey, a guy from Romania got 1st prize lottery 4 times :) probability is a *****! )

well, thanks for that, Im going now to remove moisture from my iPhone! This is great stuff!!!

what .. ?

to remove moisture .. from my iPhone .. why, what is going on .. ? Why are you grabbing that Axe .. ?

CENSORED DUE VIOLENCE THAT FOLLOWED

****All jokes aside, I really hope you will find this thread useful, educational and entertaining, and most important part - dont let your phone get wet in the first place :)