Got your phone wet? Here’s your solution. Ice cream!

Water, water, everywhere, but it’s all in my phone. AGH!

You know what it’s like, the screen looks like an electronic goldfish bowl and it makes a sad swishing sound when moved around.

A drop in the bath, a fall into a drink or even an unfortunate accident involving the toilet. It’s bad.

Insurance? Yeah, that’s expensive and, with the financial climate being as it is, it’s something a lot of people do without. I’ve seen a good few people carrying phones with broken screens, and it mostly because people can’t afford to get them fixed. It’s the same for water damage. Even if you have got insurance, there’s usually a fee to pay and a lot of people either carry on using the broken phone (if they can) or get a cheaper substitute phone.

So, the options if you’ve got a moist Motorola? A wet Windows Phone? A soggy Samsung? Well, this is the solution my friends…

A tub of ice cream? Nah, let me explain 🙂 It’s our old rice trick. I’ve mentioned it before but this weekend I had cause to use it myself after I rather unfortunately left a HTC MyTouch 4G handset out in the rain overnight. I’m sure I’m not the only one who takes their phone outside, mowing the lawn, only to realise much later that it’s still out there.

When I retrieved it I had a lovely condensation effect and, although it turned on, it was like looking through your bathroom window. Gahh..

“Ruined!”, thought I, but then I remembered the rice trick.

It involves a bag of rice and the hot water cylinder in your house. I don’t know about you, but I love that little room where the hot water cylinder lives. It’s cosy, warm and snug. Usually your towels live in there and, even if you’re a big hunk of man meat like me, you secretly love the warmth of those towels when they come out of the airing cupboard.

Where was I?

Ahh yes. So, the first thing you do is to take everything off the phone that you can. Covers, cases, the back, the battery, the SIM card, the microSD card, even those bits of fluff.

The next thing to do is to get in your kitchen cupboards. A bag of rice is what you need. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I used basmati rice last time I did this, but this time it was bog standard brown rice from Aldi. Oh yes, livin’ the dream 🙂

Got your rice? Yeah? Good. Next thing to do is to get a sandwich box / lunch box. I didn’t have one to hand, but luckily I’d just finished off some rather lovely cornish ice cream, so I washed out the box (no jokes please) and dried it thoroughly.

That ice cream was ruddy gorgeous by the way.

Next up, I filled the ice cream box with the cheap brown rice. Then I just plonked the phone in there. You’ll find that some people tell you to put it with the back facing down, but I shoved it in just as is. Ideally you should have enough rice to cover the phone.

So, I’ve buried the phone. Now it’s time to pop the lid on, stick it on tight. Then put it right on top of the special jacket thing in the airing cupboard.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. The only real unknown is how long the whole process will take. Sometimes you’ll find that the rice will draw out the moisture in a few hours or just a day or two. Other times you may find that it’ll take a week or more. Persist with it though and, obviously, l check that your hot water is set to come on at some point else none of this will work.

Just as an aside, all these shots were taken with the all-new HTC One I’m borrowing from UR Mobilelast night in low-light. Obviously the airing cupboard itself hasn’t got a light at all, and you can see how well the shot has come out. Rather nice.