I’ll be honest, Kensington sent me this a long while ago and it sat in a drawer for far too long. I’d forgotten about it until this last weekend, when “something” happened.
The EVAP Rescue Pouch is a step up from the “bag of rice” solution should your phone ever get dropped in water. Inside the main pouch there’s two smaller pouches which draw the moisture out from your drowned phone.
The problem is, with a product such as this, it probably will spend a lot of time in a drawer. When your phone gets wet, it’s important to use this product as soon as possible, so leaving your phone dripping while you order one will mean you’ve lost precious day.
Remember what the Scouts say – be prepared.
So, what was the “something” that happened? Well, I’ve started to cycle quite a bit. I’m training because, perhaps unwisely, I agreed to cycle from London to Paris. It’s a long stretch, with 100 miles off-road on day one, so I’ve been putting in the miles and cycling over trails to get my fitness levels up.
On Sunday, as I awoke at crazy-AM to get on my bike, I grabbed an Sony Xperia T. I chose it as it had a Three SIM card in and my usual phone, as I’d learned on my previous ride, had gone flat pretty quickly and didn’t record my efforts on Strava properly. (Strava, by the way, is a fitness website where you can record your trails and efforts securely and follow others doing the same).
The Xperia T ended up in my pocket and off we went. The ride was pretty eventful, with a number of punctures and huge amounts of very deep mud along the way. Not only that, but it was absolutely hammering it down. I got soaked. Each puddle made my feet wetter and they ended up looking like pale ice-blocks some two-hours later when I returned. I came back and dropped my soaked clothing onto the floor as it was so wet.
Then, as I came back down the stairs after getting changed, I asked my wife where my clothes had gone. They were in the washing machine and yes, in the pocket of my shorts, so was the Xperia T. I watched as it moved around and around in the washing machine, as I waited for the “cancel” command to kick in on the washer. Eventually it did, and I dumped out the wet clothes into a bowl, only to find a very dead and very wet Xperia T in my pocket. Check out that misted camera lens. It wouldn’t turn on and I don’t even want to try plugging it in otherwise… BANG! 🙂
Now, let me tell you a bit about the Sony Xperia T. Firstly, it has a battery that you can’t remove. Secondly, it’s definitely not waterproof. Thirdly there’s no way of removing the rear cover and finally – there’s hardly any opening between the innards of the handset and the outside world.
So, add all that up and I wasn’t hopeful that this EVAP Rescue Pouch would work. The pouch has a lining which soaks up to 90% of the moisture from your handset. The instructions are fairly simple – you remove the battery cover (I can’t do that), remove the battery (I can’t do that), remove the SIM and the microSD card and then pop the phone into the pouch along with two smaller pouches which should help to suck out the moisture from your device.
The two drying agent pouches sit either side of the phone, then you re-seal the which pouch and place your phone somewhere safe. As is my habit now, I’ve stuck it in the airing cupboard. You can leave the phone in there for between 6-24 hours, but if your phone got completely soaked (like mine) it may take up to 48 hours. There’s an indicator on the front of the bag which turns brown to let you know when the moisture has been removed and it’s safe to open the EVAP pouch and try to power on the phone.
As I mentioned before, I really didn’t hold out any hope. The sheer fact that I only had a tiny gap in the phone to try and remove moisture through. Amazingly, some 48 hours after the event, it powered back on and booted fine. The back of the screen, however, was a different story and the display was definitely darker due to the water damage. I’ve popped it back into the bag in the vein home that it’ll dry out the rest of the screen but I can but hope.
Here’s a video I filmed after opening the bag…
Overall, for £19.99 (check out the Kensington website for the full details), it was well worth the money. Personally I wasn’t too sure how the silicon pouches differed to the small silicon pouches you get when you buy a TV or other electrical device, so I’d like to perhaps to see the EVAP pouch a little cheaper unless there’s something additional in those little drying pouches I’m not aware of. Remember, however, no solution is 100% effective. This really worked well indeed and I was proper impressed that it managed to resurrect a phone that had spent some 40 minutes in a washing machine!