Whether it went in the toilet, the sink, or got caught in the rain walking down Strathmore's Main Street, the first half hour after your phone gets wet matters more than anything you do afterward. Here's what actually helps.
1. Get it out of the water and power it off immediately
If your phone is still on, turn it off right away — don't just let the screen go dark, hold the power button and shut it down properly. A powered-off phone is far less likely to short-circuit than one that's still running current through wet components.
Don't press any buttons more than you need to. Every button press can push water further into the device through the seams around switches and ports.
2. Dry the outside, but don't shake it
Pat the phone dry with a soft cloth. Resist the urge to shake it to get water out — shaking can drive water deeper into the phone rather than out of it, especially into the speaker grilles and charging port.
3. Skip the rice
The rice trick doesn't actually work, and it can make things worse. Rice dust and starch can get into the charging port and speakers, and rice is a slow, inconsistent desiccant at best. It also gives people false confidence to wait days before getting the phone looked at — time that matters for water damage.
If you want to help draw out moisture while you get to a repair shop, silica gel packets (the kind that come in shoe boxes or vitamin bottles) work better than rice, though neither replaces a proper internal cleaning.
4. Don't plug it in to charge
This is the single most damaging thing people do after a water spill. Plugging in a wet phone can cause a short circuit or corrosion that turns a fixable problem into a dead motherboard. Leave it unplugged until it's been professionally checked and dried, even if the battery is low.
5. Don't try to turn it back on "just to check"
It's tempting to power it on to see if it still works. If there's still moisture inside, turning it on can cause a short that wouldn't have happened if it had stayed off. Wait until it's been inspected.
What actually needs to happen next
Water damage repair isn't just about drying the phone out — it's about getting inside the device, cleaning any corrosion or mineral residue off the logic board and connectors with the right solvents, and checking each component before power is reapplied. That's not something a bag of rice on the counter can do.
At our Strathmore store, water damage diagnosis is always free, so there's no cost to finding out how bad it is before deciding what to do. If you're in Strathmore, bring it in as soon as you can — the sooner corrosion is cleaned off, the better the odds of a full recovery.
Quick recap — do: power off immediately, pat dry, keep it unplugged, get it checked same-day.
Don't: shake it, use rice, plug it in, or power it back on to test it.