Uncle Ben could be your drowning cellphone's best friend

It happens plenty of times. One second you are holding on to your expensive smartphone and the next second, it is part of your balanced breakfast as it sits in your bowl of cereal taking on milk. Sometimes gadgets like a cellphone will pop back to life after accidentally getting soaked, but sometimes the power will not turn back on, or the screen will show a funny image that is telling you that your device is dying.

When your cellphone does get wet enough to stop working correctly, there are steps to take  to improve the odds of a recovery. According to web site WikiHow, the first step is to get your phone out of the moisture quickly. Sitting and gazing at your iPhone as it does the backstroke in your toilet is only going to make matters worse. It takes about 20 seconds for moisture to start seeping into the electronics of a modern handset. The next step is to remove the battery. Some circuits will survive getting wet if they do not have power. If you have a GSM phone, remove your SIM card. This step could save all of your important data that you have stored on your device, like contacts. Don't heat up the card, merely pat it dry and put it aside for later.

Next, take a vacuum cleaner and try to dry out the phone. Do not use a hair dryer because it could blow water into other parts of the phone. Use the vacuum for 20 minutes over each accessible area. Done right, this step alone could get your phone up and running within 30 minutes, but don't get too close to the phone while holding the vacuum; that could cause static electricity which would doom the whole effort. Next, leave the phone sitting in a bowl or bag of uncooked rice overnight. The rice will absorb excess moisture. It is the same reason why restaurants put rice inside a salt shaker. Better than rice would be the use of a desiccant product such as "DRY-ALL" or "Damp-Rid". You can also try putting the phone on absorbent towels or paper. Check the absorbent material every hour for 4 to 6 hours. If moisture is still present, go back to the vacuum and repeat the steps from there.

After a day or so, replace the battery and turn on the device. If it works, congratulations. If the phone doesn't turn on, try using the charger. If that works, you need to replace the battery. If not, go to an authorized dealer and explain everything. (Don't try to hide the dunking. Stickers on the phone will reveal water damage). And if that fails, you can take the phone apart and try to reassemble it. If nothing works, you can just go and buy a new phone.

Hopefully, you will never need to reference this article. But if we can save the life of just one cellphone, passing along these hints will have been definitely worth it.

source: wikiHow via lifehacker