Every monsoon the advice comes out with the umbrellas: if your phone gets soaked, bury it in a bowl of rice. The internet is full of it, and so is every phone shop in Dhaka. It does not work. Rice absorbs a little moisture from the outside of the phone, and that is all. It cannot reach water that has got inside, and when wet rice starts to leach starch, the fine dust and paste it leaves in the charging port and speaker grille do more harm than the water did.
Why the myth persists
Because phones often survive anyway. A splashed phone left switched off for a day usually dries on its own; the rice gets the credit. Tests by repair specialists have found rice no better than leaving the phone on a table, and worse than silica gel. The damage from water is corrosion on the circuit board, which takes hours to days, and short circuits when current flows through a wet board, which is instant. Neither is affected by rice.
What actually helps
- Switch it off immediately and do not switch it on to "check". Electricity plus water is what kills phones.
- Do not charge it. Charging a wet phone is the single most common way a survivable soaking becomes a dead phone.
- Take out the SIM and memory card and open any covers; wipe the outside and shake water out of the ports gently.
- Dry with air, not heat. Stand it upright in front of a fan or in an air-conditioned room for 24 to 48 hours. Silica gel packets, the little sachets from shoe boxes and medicine bottles, help if you have a jarful. A hair dryer, an oven or the sun on a tin roof will warp the screen adhesive and cook the battery.
- Wait longer than feels necessary. Two days is not excessive.
- If it fell in dirty water, a drain, a pond or the sea, go to a repair shop the same day; salt and silt corrode faster than clean water, and a technician can open it and clean the board with isopropyl alcohol.
When you can stop worrying
Phones from the iPhone 7, the Galaxy S7 and the Sony Xperia XZ onwards carry an IP67 or IP68 rating, meaning they survive half an hour in a metre or more of fresh water. Most flagships and many mid-range phones sold in Bangladesh since 2020 do too; the Tk 15,000 phones generally do not, though some are "splash resistant". Whatever the rating, it is tested with fresh water when new; seals age, and no manufacturer's warranty covers water damage, which they can detect from a small indicator sticker inside the SIM tray. So even with an IP68 phone, rinse off salt water quickly and let the ports dry before charging.
