Have you ever wondered how to dry your phone if you drop it in water? Do not panic! We know how to proceed and will tell you what to do if you drop your phone in the water.
Why does water affect a smartphone so negatively?
Distilled water does not conduct electricity. However, things change as soon as other components, such as mineral salts or electrolytes, are added. For this reason, the water from the tap at home, a swimming pool, a sea, or a river is highly conductive of electricity. All electronic devices perform their tasks within a specific range of current. If they get wet, the electricity that passes through them is modified. The device’s chip, capacitor, or resistor will see how its operating range is exceeded by having been invaded by a conductor. It will most likely break due to melting, exploding, sparking, or melting.
Wet mobile? What to do if a mobile has fallen into the water
From the previous explanation, you will have deduced that the relationship between the mobile and the water is very problematic. If you have dropped it in a liquid, you are probably worried that it will be completely unusable. Especially considering you’d have to buy another one. Considering how much it pollutes making a mobile, it is not a sustainable option. For this reason, at Cash Converters, we believe in responsible consumption. We are going to give you some tips so that you can try to prevent water from breaking your phone. You have to follow these steps.
- Immediately take the phone out of the water and turn it off.
When you find yourself in this situation, try not to get paralyzed and act quickly. You should take the device out of the liquid and turn it off immediately. In this way, you will prevent the current from being affected by water and the components inside the device from breaking. If you turn it off, you will cut off all electricity. It also begins by giving it a superficial drying. Use a towel that does not leave residues, and ensure that all visible parts of the smartphone are utterly free of moisture and water droplets.
- Try to remove all removable components.
Even if you have dried the surface, it is still a wet smartphone inside. Therefore, remove all covers, plugs, and components that can be removed without the need for tools or disassembling the mobile. If you can, remove the battery, SIM card, memory card, covers, and other easy-to-remove accessories. Try to dry them separately, making sure that there is no trace of moisture in any of the parts. It is important to dry it quickly to avoid possible oxidation of any of these essential components of the device.
- Absorb moisture from the wet smartphone
Once you’ve taken care of the separable parts, it’s time to focus on the phone itself. It would help if you absorbed all its moisture as soon as possible. In the same way that we have taught you how to solder with tin, we will now give you some tricks to remove water from a mobile.
- First, carefully remove as much water as you can using sponges of various sizes. Try to avoid at all costs solutions that have to do with heat. No dryer, oven, or microwave. This would only melt the internal components of the smartphone, rendering it useless.
- Then, take oatmeal or silica gel beads and dip your phone in them. Do not use rice, as it has already been shown that it is not as effective as it is believed.
- Let it dry completely, be patient!
You mustn’t turn on your mobile before it is scorched. As long as it’s off, even if it’s still wet, there’s still hope of being able to save it. If you turn it on too soon, however, you’ll only cause a fatal short circuit that will kill your device. In this line, we recommend that you let at least one whole night pass with your mobile turned off. This, in most cases, will suffice.
- Enjoy your smartphone again.
If you follow these steps in the letter, you will most likely be able to recover your mobile perfectly. You will have saved the cost of a new one and the need to consume and increase your carbon footprint. After all, there is no better way to act sustainably than to avoid excessively consuming newly manufactured products, which produce so much CO₂.
And if the mobile that falls into the water has stopped working 100%
At Cash Converters, we love second chances, that’s for sure. We are committed to extending the life of products, so every day, we start the circular economy with thousands of products. But, we also know that there are times when this is not possible, and the products say goodbye, and it is time to say goodbye to them as they deserve.
How to recycle a phone that no longer works
What if there is no way to save it? Recycle it!
Most importantly, you don’t throw the phone in the trash. Each phone contains highly polluting elements for the environment. And not only that, but the extraction of all of them also harms our Planet, and we can avoid this by reusing some parts of mobile phones that stop working.
At Cash Converters, we have some green points in our stores that you can use to recycle the components together with Ecole. In this way, you will promote more responsible consumption and collaborate to create a better world by launching the circular economy.
