Recent news flash: an avid Apple fan has landed into troubled water (literally) when he cheated and infuriated his girlfriend. His then angry girlfriend drowned all his Apple devices which include Apple MacBook, iPhone, and his brand new iPad, Apple iMac into the bathtub and posted images on her Twitter handle ‘@foolishnessfly2’. By the time I am writing this she garnered copious amount of retweets, favorites and applause in the form of replies for her nouveau techie plan of retaliation on his lying and cheating partner. But, if we go by those gadgets, massive data loss and physical losses occurred to those devices owing to water damages. Now the question is can anyone save gadgets from water damage? Many suggest placing wet gadgets into the bed of uncooked rice which is an age-old, clichéd method of drying them out. Sadly, this process turns out to be hardly effective in rescuing water-damaged gadgets.
Read more: How to waterproof your iPhone?
So, what are the alternatives?
Our gadgets contain massive amount of data and costs lots of money too. That’s why having an effective plan for saving gadgets from water damage is imperative to protect them against potential risk of gadgets being drowned by someone, accidental drop into the tub, toilet, under the tap or any other incidence of water damage. So, dismiss the rice myth and consider these really effective 5 methods and steps to recover gadgets and data from water damage.
#1. Disconnect and cut off the power
The first and foremost step after the take out the gadget from water or wet place is to drying gadget. You can use a paper towel to dry the water droplets or moist on wet gadgets. After you have dried the gadget from outside, you need to dry it from inside as well. All this while, make sure you didn’t turn on the device immediately after you picked the gadget from water or till the time you know there is no moisture remaining in the phone. Also, do not connect your smartphone or other wet gadgets to the power after the water damage occurs because lithium-ion battery and liquid do not work – hence, keeping the phone tuned off is the best practice you need to remember.
#2. Dissemble the wet gadget
There are multiple water sensors on your gadgets. The headphone jack, the dock connectors, the speaker and microphone outlets are some of them. These sensors are usually white, but if those are turned red then, it signals that water has gone inside the device. Hence, you need to dissemble the wet device to dry it off to prevent serious water damage. Take out the SIM cards, SD card, battery and headphone and any port coverings.
#3. Use High-Tech Vacuum
You will not believe but the best you can do to suck out the liquid and moist from the wet device is use this: a vacuum cleaner. So, if the thought of using and throwing hot air from your hair dryer to dry out the device crossed your mind, then you need to discard it right then. Use your handy vacuum cleaner having narrow nozzle instead to pump out the moisture as much as possible. After you dissemble the device, you need to hold the nozzle for around five minutes on all the water sensors, through speaker and microphone outlets, earphone ports, USB/power/dock connector ports and other openings through which liquid might leak inside. This method will vaporize the water and gets your laptop, tablet, iPhone or other smartphone device. Thus, your phone will start working again and the data will be intact too.
#4. Use any drying agent
If you are hesitant to use vacuum cleaner or you cannot find any at the time of unfortunate water spill or drop, then you can use other drying alternatives to save your gadgets from water damage. One of the best drying agents is silica gel which you can easily find lying inside your laptop bag or inside other gadget sleeves. Put your wet device with a silica gel for overnight to see the difference. Other than silica gel, you can also use couscous or cat litter which work well in soaking wet iPhone, iPad or any Android smartphone. But, remember, the uncooked rice option must be the last resort if you do not find any of these drying agents.
#5. Use data recovery software
After you have successfully dried your wet device from inside and out and managed to rescue it from the water damage, here is one last thing you need to do. Once you have recovered the device from water damage, it is time to recover data in case you found you lost it. Instead of freaking out, try this easy method – use data recovery or data backup to restore all of it. Whether you are using an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Android-based smartphone or tablet, there will always be a backup version of all the data accessible on device.
Data recovery on iOS device
iOS device owners can recover data from the computer synced to the device via iTunes where all the files will be backed up. Or else you can use iPhone Data Recovery software to restore data which gets backed up automatically on iPhone. Once you plug your device to the computer and hit ‘Scan’ button, you will be able to restore data including contacts, messages, call logs, calendar events and notes. Once scanned, all the lost data will be shown and you can simply choose the data you want to restore.
Data recovery on Android device
Similarly, you can use backup from Google Account or other cloud service you are using on Android to recover lost data on your Droid device. You can also restore contacts from SIM card or SD card if you have maintained the best practice of keeping a backup on these secondary storage devices.
Read more: Are you using sunscreen protection from your gadgets?
And you are done – no loss, no pain at all! Thus, you can not only save gadgets from water damage, but the recover data that might be wiped clean due to water damage. So, what do you think the best practice of rescuing wet device? Share your views and tips below.