> Open your device as soon as you can, take out the battery,

If only our devices were user-friendly instead of planned obsolescent.

Built-in batteries are part of the planned waterproof nature of modern phones, so that's a bit of an odd statement in this context.

If you drown your iPhone XS, you just wipe it off. Removable batteries mean openings, which means intrusion opportunities.

None of the iPhones had removable batteries, and none but the most recent ones are waterproof.

They've been reducing ingress points over time. The removal of the headphone jack was at least partially for this reason; so was the non-mechanical home button.

A battery door is a giant potential ingress point for water.

No, those are just more ways to stop people from opening their phones and doing things like replacing batteries rather than buying a new phone. There are water resistant phones with headphone jacks, removable batteries etc. Shoot even a plug for potential infress points would be fine. Sorry, I just hate the new anti-consumer trend of irreplaceable batteries. Feels like we are back to the days where every phone had a diff charger port. Anything to make people spend more money than they have to. /rant.

Yes, and all of those things mean other compromises.

Article: Rice doesn't work. If it worked for you, it was a coincidence and your phone would have been fine anyway.

Commenters: Yes but I put my phone in rice once and it worked, so...

I have had rice work several times - maybe it wasn't the rice but just a coincidence.

I should note I left the phone in the rice for a few days, and it still didn't work. So I bought a new phone and forgot about it for a few months. Low and behold, when I did remember it months later, it worked, and did for a year or so more.

I have a rock that keeps tigers away, does it work? Well I’ve never had a tiger in my apartment so it must work right?

Correlation is not causation. You left your phone in rice, but it didn’t work. It didn’t do anything. The water dried just like it would in any setting. And you where lucky to not get any damage from the corrosion.

I, also, have had rice work, albeit not every time (I realize this statement makes it sound like I dunk my phone on a regular basis but honestly I don't). I don't doubt that there are better dessicants out there, but rice is always handy.

Digressing slightly, but he mentions the difficulty with trying to clean dried pancake batter...

The trick to cleaning dry pancake batter is to soak the area with water for a few minutes. It'll revert back into a more batter-like texture and will easily wipe off.

Is there any solution to water damaged Mac standalone keyboards ? I have several keyboards that were ruined by minor water spills. I don't understand what component in these keyboards gets permanently destroyed by water.

One of mine died just from the moisture of a cleaning cloth after a wipe down. Pretty sad.

I've used Damp-Rid that they sell in the hardware store before.

I put the device (in my case it was an mp3 player that I ran with in a rainstorm) in a sealed container with the stuff. I left it in there for a few days and it did the job and it worked for about a year afterwards. It still does "work" but the screen is always blank now, so who knows, maybe the corrosion got to it in the end...

Clickbait headline deliberately fails to explain what to use instead of rice.

>What you want to do is first displace the water—or more specifically, all the conductive stuff in the water. You can do this best by using 90%+ isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol and a toothbrush. Open your device as soon as you can, take out the battery, and get scrubbing. Submerge the whole motherboard in alcohol, and scrub away. Only then, dry it and see where you stand. By getting the liquid displaced before it can dry, we are cleaning the pancake batter on Sunday morning. This is your best strategy for liquid damage.

What would you have titled it?

I'm not sure that "Instead of putting your phone in rice, open it up, douse it in 90%+ isopropyl and brush it with a toothbrush to remove the water before it dries" is short enough to be an effective title.

And "To fix a drowned phone, drown it again in isopropyl" is arguably even more click-baity.

In further defense, the comments here show the necessity of a title like this. If the title were "how to fix a drowned phone," many people would say "oh, I know this one, just put it in rice" and ignore the article.

Youtube version: Fix your WET PHONE by DROWNING IT!

Thumbnail is a picture of a guy in SCUBA gear holding a phone and looking shocked. The phone is circled in red for some reason.

Cllickbait witholds information to make you click. This headline is clickbait because it witholds information. "To fix a drowned phone, soak it in isopropyl" is better because it's a summary and conveys information.

Would it be reasonable to put that entire paragraph in the headline instead?

Louis Rossmann did a video [1] on rice and its effects on electronics, debunking the myth completely.

[1]: https://youtu.be/yPeITOz2_YM

Brought to you by the guy which sells machines to clean electronic devices.

It worked on my phone. Shut it down immediately, put in rice. You can clearly see the rice getting moistened slowly.

A bit late, this was like the first result on google - https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014/05/06/gazelles-guide-wa...

To be clear, the Gazelle article is the incorrect one - it advocates drying the phone first using a desiccant like silica gel or cat litter (though it says rice is the least effective of them). There is no mention of using alcohol (except in some comments).

The iFixit article advocates displacing the water using rubbing alcohol (i.e. open it up and dunk the motherboard/etc. in alcohol) - thus halting the corrosion that would continue if it were left to dry.

Is alcohol better than just patting it dry and blowing it out with some compressed air?

Yes. With alcohol you're displacing the water. With compressed air you might end up pushing it into new nooks and crannies it wouldn't otherwise have been able to reach.

But doesn't booze like to mix with water?

Yes, so strictly speaking you're not only displacing the water; you're dissolving it into the alcohol. But assuming you're using more than a tiny bit of alcohol, the water/alcohol ratio of the solution will be minuscule. Furthermore, if you pour alcohol over the components, the new alcohol will displace the just-formed solution.

It doesn't behave strictly that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuV8ILW5cAQ