what if you don’t have a robe?

This works surprisingly well. I dropped my 3G iPhone in a lake last summer (on my birthday, no less!). It was turned on when it fell in, and it wouldn’t shut off—I guess the lock button was shorted somehow.

I brought it home, pulled out the SIM and let it do its thing for a couple days. It discharged the entire battery while flashing some message about an incompatible peripheral being attached (Lake Champlain apparently is an incompatible peripheral).

A few days later, I charged it up, and it was fine. I renamed it to Team Zissou.

No need for a robe, just a Towel

This worked well for my wife who got her iPhone 3G soaked within the first few days of owning it.

Also, if you have some spare Silica packets lying around (from show boxes and clothes) those should work to draw out moisture as well.

I’ve never heard of using a blow dryer and rice. Whenever any of my electronics got wet, I’d stick it into the fridge overnight. Because a refrigerator sucks out moisture, and does it well.

Quote of the day: “Lake Champlain apparently is an incompatible peripheral.”

This will temporarily fix it, but in a few months the electronics will eventually corrode

What if it were already turned on?

The bag of rice definitely works. My 2 year old dropped my iPhone 3GS in a (clean-ish) toilet. Makes a good potty training tool until they drop it. I also received the incompatible peripheral message, apparently toilets are in the same category as Lake Champlain. After two days in a bag of rice, fully functional and has worked great every since.

I’m the resident tech support person in my family. I’ve saved several iPods with the bag of rice trick and each time it astonishes someone, you want me to put it in a bag of what?!?

The Gadget Show on the UK’s Channel 5 recently debunked the rice drying method. It was no better than leaving the device on a tabletop to dry out. They got better, faster results by using a vacuum cleaner to suck all the water from the device, and then leave it under a warm desk lap (50cm away) for a day.

I’ve also been told that you should dump a wet device (sans battery and SIM) in neat alcohol, as it will prevent the fine wires and terminals inside from rusting, prior to the above vacuum/heat treatment. The alcohol should also evaporate faster.

Another website suggested using an industrial freeze drying machine, like those found in fancy restaurants. Interesting concept, but I’m not sure if I’d trust it to work without damaging the device due to the cold.

Dirty or tea-drenched keyboards can often be saved by putting them in a dishwasher.

Might be best to wash it in distilled/deionised water first, so that salts don’t get deposited as the water evaporates

The general idea (don’t turn on equipment that has electronics if it’s wet) actually applies to many, ah, devices. For example, a BMW 6 series owned by my boss. She was a techie and knew better. The mechanics told her that if she had waited for it to dry, it would probably have worked fine, but the first thing she did, once the water and fish had been dumped out of the car, was reach for the ignition switch. I believe every other car down there operated fine, she was the test guinea pig it seems. She was rather impulsive, that was her nature. I had learned to thoroughly test everything because she had a “deploy it now” philosophy.

The story of how it got swamped is interesting. The garage the car was in was underneath the office building, and this being Florida, there was an elaborate gate that should elevate upon a certain amount of water tripping a sensor.

Well, they had gotten lax on testing this, and there was a monsoon like downpour, and the gate went up, but the “bladders” that were supposed to inflate to prevent leakage around the gate and the side of the wall failed to inflate, I think because they were worn or punctured.

@David – I’m always a little cautious on those “debunking” shows, given it’s all to easy to slap together a TV program, vs. doing a peer-reviewed study. Did they take into consideration the moisture level of the rice? The relative humidity of the surrounding air? Airflow? How exactly did they measure “dryness”? (See link below) In general I like the idea of putting the reasoning to test, but sometimes their scientific method is too simplistic resulting in a flawed study, thus I’m a bit skeptical (sceptical). http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/uccerice/rice_quality/pdf/C-5Rice_drying_Principles.pdf