It is well known that electronic devices (be it a smartphone, laptop or even a PC) do not get along very well with water, just as we all know that Accidents sometimes happen: you spill coffee on the keyboard, you get the phone falling into the pool, or your coolant leaks and the entire PC ends up soaked in water. Popular belief is that the rice This is an excellent method for dry and wet devices, but the reality is that not only is there a much more effective method, but it also won’t damage your devices (which can happen with rice). We explain how.
First of all, you need to keep in mind that depending on the type of liquid that came into contact with your devices and depending on how long they were wet, neither this solution nor any other can work. And spilling a sugary soft drink on your laptop keyboard is not the same as spilling a glass of water, just as spilling a little liquid is not the same as completely emptying the liquid reservoir of your laptop. cooling your coolant.
Previous steps to consider
Time is of the essence when a device gets wet, so the quicker you react, the more likely you are to save it. The first thing to do is to completely turn off the device (anyway, it doesn’t matter if it’s a smartphone or a laptop) and unplug it from the power supply if it was connected, then try to dry it as much as you can with a clean cloth to remove the majority of the liquid.
After drying the device with a cloth and removing most of the liquid, the next thing to do is to look for an air gun or hair dryer and try to dry the device with it (if it If it’s a tumble dryer, try to turn off the hot air or keep the heat to a minimum, being careful in any case not to burn your appliance). If the device has perforations (such as for speakers, etc.) through which water can escape, make sure they face downwards so that gravity works in your favor.
Thanks to the air pressure you will push out most of the water that may have gotten inside the device, but even so it is likely that this will not save it completely, so we must move on to the next point.
How to effectively dry wet devices
With the previous two steps we will have gotten rid of most of the liquid, but not all of it. Popular belief says that the ideal is to put the device in rice, and that is not bad because rice is in fact a product that absorbs a lot of moisture and liquids… the problem is that in doing so, it tends to swell, and since the rice grains are so small they could get into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies, and even (depending on the rice) they could “protrude” and get stuck. This can help, but it’s not the best way to dry wet devices.
Surely you have often encountered these small bags, usually white, which are usually found in almost all hardware devices and even in shoe boxes: Silica gel. They are “balls” with much greater moisture absorption power than rice, and they have the advantage of not disintegrating when wet and not penetrating into nooks and crannies.
Plus, thanks to their immense absorbency, you won’t even need to “bury” the device in them, and keeping 2 to 3 bags of them will be more than enough in most cases.
The technique is as follows, and this step is very important because another element is needed: a waterproof container, such as an airtight kitchen container (Tupperware type). If you have a completely airtight, leak-proof container, that’s even better, but if not (because you don’t have one on hand or because you don’t have one big enough), you can simply use a plastic bag. plastic… the point is that you leave the device and the silica gel completely “enclosed”, so that the gel absorbs all the moisture from the device (and not from the environment).
As we said before, you don’t need to completely cover the device like with rice, but having a few gel balls as close to the device as possible will be enough. For example, for an object the size of a smartphone, two of these bags are enough.
So, now you know: when you buy a device or shoes and one of these bags arrives, keep it because it can help you save your devices. Now, if you want, you can also buy them, for example on AliExpress (you can also inquire at your local hardware store).
