How do you dry out a cell phone?
If you’ve never soaked a cell phone in the outdoors, you probably don’t fish enough to read my blog or its going to happen this weekend and you’ve just jinxed yourself! All kidding aside, I actually have a method for recovering a soaked cell phone.
Whether it was left in a boat compartment that wasn’t so water tight, your coat pockets took on a little water or you just fell in the water with your phone in your pocket. Unfortunately, I think I have had all these happen to me. The bag of white rice thing rarely works and you are months away from your next phone upgrade.
So below is a simple plan to saving your expensive cell phone:
1 – Get yourself out of the water. Although tempting, don’t try to turn the phone on.
2 – Get phone out of water and open it up & take battery and memory cards out.
3 – Wrap everything in something dry; keep it away from any more moisture
4 – Wait until your wife/girlfriend is out of the kitchen
5 – Place battery in a bag of white rice & seal it up
6 – Get two cookie sheets
7 – Place empty cookie sheet on bottom rack closest to burners
8 – Spread out all components of your phone except for battery on cookie sheet & place on top rack
9 – Set oven to 150°F & bake for 8-12 hours
10 – Let it cool and put back together, fire it up and smile, you just saved $300 or more!
This is no joke, it really works. If your oven won’t go down that low with its settings like mine, get an oven thermometer with an external display and then you can cycle it on and off to keep the temperature low enough. Baking sheets are important to shield your phone from direct heat blasts when oven cycles on & off to adjust temperature. Cell phones are designed to operate at temperatures around 160°F so that is why baking the moisture out of it works so well.
Rich
RichLindgren.com
