Help! Quick question about the cell phone/rice trick.

[Starbrite]

DS washed his cell phone. I know I'm supposed to seal it in a baggie of rice but I have 2 questions...

1) Leave the battery alone or take it out?
2) All I have on hand is minute rice will that work?

TIA

 

[Magic Mom]

I haven't had luck with the rice, but DD dropped hers in the creekand I took the battery out and put it in the refrigerator overnight. It dried right out and worked fine.

 

[mjkacmom]

I washed my phone, put the phone and the battery in the rice for 48 hours, and the best I could get was it worked when on the charger, so they could save my contacts, and get them on my new phone (brown rice).

 

[Bonnie40]

I have had good luck with cell phones drying out in rice. Not sure about Minute Rice though.....

I actually put the rice in a pyrex dish with the phone completely covered in rice and put it in the oven on the lowest it would go.....I think the combination of dry heat and rice does the trick. You have to be able to have the oven on a very low heat.....

 

[dislaney]

My dh did this and he took the battery off and put both the phone and the battery in with the rice. I think he left if for like 3 days - longer that they said to. His phone did work after so it was worth it.

 

[Hannathy]

Just to remind everyone but DO NOT TURN IT ON.

 

[eduk8r26]

Ours was dropped in the toilet. I took it out, took the back off, took battery out and put both phone and battery in a baggie of rice for a couple days. It worked fine, till it was lost in Washington DC!!

 

[Imzadi]

DS washed his cell phone. I know I'm supposed to seal it in a baggie of rice but I have 2 questions...

1) Leave the battery alone or take it out?
2) All I have on hand is minute rice will that work?

TIA

Take out the battery and put both in the rice. Don't seal the baggie, or you will just seal the moisture in.

 

[Charade]

I would take the battery out. The problem usually isn't the water itself, it's what's in the water that causes problems. Sugar, salt/minerals. If it has a sim card, that should be OK and can be read by another phone (that uses a sim card). You might also want to consider rinsing the whole phone in distilled water (then dry it out with rice) because that will rinse out the impurities. Distilled water isn't very conductive but the impurities are and when they dry out inside the phone, they can short things out when the battery is put back in.

 

[Starbrite]

Don't seal the baggie, or you will just seal the moisture in.

Oh no, glad you mentioned that. I assumed I was supposed to seal the baggie.

 

[dislaney]

Actually my dh just put it all in a large bowl with no cover.

 

[Charade]

Oh no, glad you mentioned that. I assumed I was supposed to seal the baggie.

I think you should seal the baggie otherwise the rice will absorb the outside moisture too. You want the moisture in the phone transfered to the rice.