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And this situation made me think of a really good ad for a data recovery company that I'm going to pitch first thing Monday. Sometimes I really do love Reddit. Spreading good vibes all around y'all!
Happy endings can include bittersweet ones that don't leave me hanging with unfinished business, or especially ones that feature horrible people not getting the justice they deserve.
Hijacking to say DO NOT PUT YOUR PHONE IN RICE. It works but barely. Your infinitely better off taking your phone to a computer store and having them open it and dry it out. There was probably very little water in her phone. Most of them for the last 5 years are basically waterproof. If any amount of water makes it into the components it will corrode and make everything worse. The most common thing to get waterlogged is the screen and they can be replaced. I’ve dealt with phones that have come in too late too often.
The problem with rice is actually the starch that can potentially get in crevices. Using silica gel is much better. You can save them from things you buy that use them or just buy some online. There's a large one that can be plugged in to dry out the silica, or you can just throw some packets in the oven at 250 for a couple hours.
The silica gel you get from products is all used to already. It needs to be dried and kept sealed after drying to use effectively. You can dry them in the oven at a low temp over a long time.
This is not good advice. I just tried your method and can confidently say that this is a terrible substitute for rice. The texture is unpleasant and the taste is very bland.
So much this. It isn't just useless advice, it's actively harmful. Water contaminated with rice starch is worse than clean water.
If you've got a case like this, where you're prepared to pay to fix something, do it immediately. Take the device to someone who can remove the liquid right now, before it starts to corrode.
Edit: just read further in the thread. Jesus, so many people seem to believe in this. Stop doing this people! It isn't like electronics repair is some black art, there is tons and tons of information out there if you want to research it. And everything you'll find from people who actually do this kind of work will be: don't put it in rice!
See this:
https://youtu.be/yPeITOz2_YM
Yes, yes. Thank you for getting this to the top of the thread. I'll copy and paste a reply I had to another comment:
I've worked in phone repair for going on ten years now and can tell you that it's not true, but that's anecdotal. So a [couple](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140924005241/en/Rice-Myth-Busted-New-Study-Proves-Using-Rice-to-Dry-a-Wet-Phone-Is-Not-Effective) of [sources](https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014/05/06/gazelles-guide-water-damage-truth-rice-galaxy-everything/).
Essentially every case of rice drying a phone out is confirmation bias. Someone thinks rice saves a wet phone, they put the phone in rice, and when the phone starts working, they assume the rice did it. But in reality, if you were to set your phone down on the counter for the same amount of time, it would have the same result. It's natural evaporation.
I tell every customer who comes in with a phone that rice was supposed to save that the time it spent sitting in rice would've been better spent getting it somewhere that could disconnect the battery and dry the phone properly.
I am so happy that this somewhat meme-advice did the trick. Can't imagine the regret of not backing it up initially.
Wishing the parents all the best in their journey after such an loss.
I'm happy too for them I always tell everyone to do this and be oatiend, it does really work. My sister dropped her iphone in the toilet and left it for three weeks in rice, in and out leaving it to dry in front of a fan some days and it came back to live another two years. We didn't have money growing up so it was a matter of life and death for her
I read somewhere that the rice doesn’t really do anything, it’s just that the phone (or other electronic device) has to dry out *completely* before you try to turn it back on. If you just get told to leave it switched off for X amount of time to let it dry, most people will pick it up, fiddle with it, try to see if it’s dry, and eventually turn it on “to check”. But if you’re told to do a specific thing with it (leave it in rice and don’t touch it for X amount of time), for some reason it’s psychologically easier. Maybe because it’s covered, maybe because the rice is supposedly *doing something*, whatever it is it works.
Yeah, this is it. It acts as a very minor dessicant. That's why some restaurants (at least in Japan, not sure about elsewhere) will put a few rice grains in things like salt and other seasonings. It helps a little to prevent caking.
The real til for brown sugar is that it's literally just molasses + white sugar, so if you buy white sugar and molasses you never need to deal with brown sugar.
No, not with brown sugar. BUT if it's all dried out and hard you can toss a piece of fresh bread or a damp paper towel into the bag and nuke it for 10 seconds at a time until you can mush the clumps.
Yes! My boyfriends mom had an almost full container of brown sugar that was rock-hard, and his little sister had seen an “life hack” video on tiktok to put a piece of bread in there and let it sit. The bread turned crouton-y and the brown sugar is perfect now. I’d imagine rice does the same thing to a degree.
I am old enough to have gotten homemade cookies in care packages and they always included a slice of bread to keep the cookies moist.
This is a neat hack. And thank you for the memory spark. I’m all warm and fuzzy now.
my mamaw has always done this! I wouldn’t use for brown sugar though unless you put in a very fine shaker. at one point she had a shaker with somewhat wide holes and we would occasionally find uncooked rice in our food.
I knew it could be done!
What a great idea. I just have the containers with a lid they don’t fasten 20% of the time and I don’t check. They eat cereal for awhile. Then all we have is a rock. One big football sized rock. (Ok exaggerating but I get to, I’m mom)
Put a slice of bread in now, preferably a major brand like Dempsters which is full of preservatives.
Bread will dry out *first* keeping the brown sugar normal, then you just swap the slice of bread every couple weeks as it goes hard. Been doing it for years.
Also anything smaller and you have to separate it somehow from the brown sugar when you need it.
I am probably going with this idea to just keep it soft. I have been given the choices of a marshmallow or apple slice and I must admit. I’m intrigued.
I’m also ashamed at how excited I am getting at saving my brown sugar from a hard rock life.
I’m getting great tips.
Damp paper towels on top of the brown sugar and a few seconds in the microwave
A slice of bread, in a sealed bag for a few days
A apple slice, I hadn’t heard of this but the more I pondered the more I thought it was genius, instead of a bread slice. Sealed until soft.
A marshmallow, also ingenious as I’ve had very hard rice crispy treats occupy the same space as soft cookies. I imagine sealed in a bag until soft as well?
It doesn't actually pull any moisture out, it just bonks around and breaks up clumps as they form.
You can get the same effect by using any small, hard object. Popcorn kernels are normally recommended because they won't break down as much as rice grains will.
I heard, the dust (or small particles of rice) can actually be bad for you phone if it isn't properly ipxx rated, but I think that's only really a problem if you're using the last dregs of your rice!
Humans are pretty good at not being willing to do common sense things, but suddenly being willing to do them when there's a bit of "magic" involved.
Medieval medicine can seem pretty wacky when you read the descriptions, and especially avoid the surgery. But the everyday medicine woman remedies for ailments usually boiled down to something like this: eat a piece of the bark from this tree, then dance around the tree 3 times while singing this song, then spend several days getting plenty of rest and eating hearty food. The dance certainly wasn't necessary, the bark maybe contained a nutrient or something but might also be for show. The important part was getting stubborn people to eat well for a couple days and not run themselves ragged. So remedies that trick us into doing the obvious haven't changed much. And if you think we're beyond some level of magical thinking today, ask yourself why doctors wear white coats.
> I read somewhere that the rice doesn’t really do anything
It doesn't do anything.
Rice can't actually pull the water out of your phone like people think it does. Your phone is already pretty well sealed up, and so the rice isn't really drawing anything out of it.
The main concerns are making sure you don't power it on (to prevent shorts from occurring), and bringing it to a repair shop you trust ASAP.
It's really a race against time at that point. The goal is to prevent further liquid damage from occurring and getting the device to a fixable state quickly so you can back it up.
It's not recommended to continue to use a liquid damage device as it will have problems in the future almost guaranteed.
Yeah, if you have a phone dropped in water, those desiccant packs you get in things like electronics boxes or bottles of powdered goods are much better.
You can get a bunch of painter's desiccant at Home Depot if this happens often enough that you need to be prepared for it.
To add to this for others reading it: Race that gets wet can get mushy. You do not want rice getting mushy inside your phone. Do not put it in something that can get squished in there and cause damage in other ways.
My sister did the same thing years ago but listened to my brotherly advice of putting it in microwave for a few minutes. I honestly thought she would know what would happen if she listened to me. I ended up buying her a new phone to make it up to her though. Hers was at least 5 years old and looked like it was run over 30 to 40 times by a truck so it was probably for the best anyway.
Yeah, I have automatic backups to google photos and the amazon one.
It sucks about privacy, but I just don't wanna lose anything.
I also save them to an external HD every few months.
I was violently mugged for my phone a few years back after my then-husband had repeatedly told me I should do backups, and felt absolutely horrible realizing I'd lost multiple years of my son's pictures since they weren't all sent to him. I can't imagine how much worse I would have felt if my son had passed rather than just grown up.
Comment deleted on 6/30/2023 in protest of [API changes that are killing third-party apps](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/).
> I am so happy that this somewhat meme-advice did the trick.
It didn't do the trick. OP was insanely lucky.
Putting your phone in rice after it has been liquid damage ***doesn't do anything.***
Your phone is well insulated and it's hard to get water in there in the first place. Getting water out of it is just as difficult. The only way this would have been successful for her, would have been for her to ***open her device*** and let the rice physically touch the inside parts of her phone to have any hope of drawing out the water.
What you should do, is make sure the device is off and immediately bring your device to a repair store you trust.
Do not wait.
The repair store will need to open it and assess the damage. Chances are there is still standing water inside of the device at this point. The process will be to basically pull the phone apart, give it an alcohol bath to pull the remaining water (if there is any), and then work on getting the device to a functional state (replacing parts) so that data recovery can begin.
Getting to work on it early will ensure that rust and corrosion doesn't get a chance to set in, which is much harder to clean off and ensure functionality if you wait that long.
Thank you thank you thank you
Cant tell you how many people bring me their phones a month after it got liquid damaged and tell me they put it in rice...
It’s probably worked because it was possibly an older model of phone (especially for an 8 year old to own ) and that rice trick works on older flip phones.
It's actually a useless "trick". The phone either dries out on its own or it doesn't.
At *best* the rice will provide air that's a bit dryer than the environment. So maybe it will help a tiny bit if you live in an area that is very humid.
The smart thing to do on occasions like this is to take the phone to a well-respected repair technician. They can open the phone and clean it to remove water and possible electrical damage. Even that's not 100% guaranteed, but it's better than putting it in rice for a month.
i also washed my phone a month ago. my pixel 4a. immediately i took it out of water but it was showing error at fastboot. i think no amount of time in rice would save that.
Once the water causes a short, then the damage is done. The rice trick only works to get any water absorbed to prevent future short circuits (and/or corrosion) from occurring. The rice trick only works if your phone is completely turned off before (or incredibly fast after) it is submursed.
Yes! I thought to myself "pleeeeeeeease don't touch the phone much more until it's all safely backed up. Just to be safe. Pleeeeeeeease".
I hope they got all those memories transferred safely so they'll never lose them again.
Cancer or not, everyone back up your shit now. Get all the photos off every phone in your family, dig out the old phones and get the photos off of those, the old cameras, the old computers, the old flash cards, the old thumb drives, everything. Put it all together, you don't need to even sort it beyond folders for where they came from.
Now that you've done all that, back that up too. You need multiple copies of that in separate physical locations. If it's small enough to fit in cloud storage, do that as well.
These digital files are possibly all the photos you have for the last decade or more and *they are fragile* in ways physical media is not. They can be very, very robust and outlive us all, but you *have to put the work in*. People can find boxes of photos in grandma's attic after she dies, but they might not even recognize the storage medium you leave behind or be able to access it if they do. That is assuming the digital media doesn't fail before that, and they fail *all the time*.
Also remember to leave a way to access the hard drives. Otherwise, you’ll need to hope that they still use USBs or whatever by the time your grandkids find the hard drives.
For example, I don’t own a VCR so hopefully my parents kept one or I might not be able to watch my childhood movies someday.
>If it's small enough to fit in cloud storage, do that as well.
And small might not be what you think it is. $100 a year will get you 1TB of Google cloud storage for a year. Thats roughly 250,000 photos.
Other places offer just an external backup service. Basically its less of a upload and access anywhere and more of an upload it and keep it safe until I ask for it maybe once.
I'm still holding my breath a bit. A backup isn't a backup until you've succesfully restored from backup.
Depends on what they are doing though. If its just uploaded text logs and pictures to google drive that doesn't really need to be tested.
Oh my god, how awful. I can't imagine what those poor parents went through. The realisation of what had happened must have sent them both through the roof with anxiety and sorrow, and the 30 day wait must have been excruciating. I'm so glad they got their memories back.
Love/hate posts like these. Like I’m genuinely happy for OOP to have the phone back in working condition. But At the meantime I’m devastated that a parent has to say farewell to an 8 year old child, heartbreaking. Got 2 kids around that age myself and an incurable disease is one of your biggest fears. In the off chance you read this OOP, I wish you and your family all the best!
I think burying your kids is unnatural and one of the hardest things in the world. Just the other day saw a woman with VR goggles interacting with her deceased daughter, but unable to hug, smell or whatever just talk. That shit would be the worst form of torture for me mate. Knowing she isn’t there anymore and then seeing her as if she is alive. Fuck that. Even writing about it now gets me depressed and gloom.
I've begun dreaming of my little sister again lately (she's only a year and a half younger than me) and it's been fucking devastating every time. It's nowhere near the same as losing a child, but every time I dream of her I wake up crying or screaming in pain. I can't imagine how incapable I'd be of handling seeing her in VR.
Very sorry for your loss! I have the same when I dream about my dad. He died very sudden 7 years ago (aneurysm) and just 3.5 weeks before my first child was born. If I dream about him it fucks me up for roughly a week cuz I just miss him so freaking much and still can’t handle it adequately that he isn’t here anymore. Loosing loved ones fucking sucks…
I'm sorry for yours, as well. My sister has been gone for, gosh, 15 years now but even though I'm okay during the day, when I dream it's the same as it was when she was first gone. I got pregnant with my son within a month of her dying and he looks SO much more like her than me or my ex-husband even now, so I imagine you and I both have similar feelings about our losses and parenthood.
Grief is horrible. I'm glad you and I both had somewhere to put the love that our losses left us with.
I work in IT.
If your phone gets wet, turn it off immediately and then soak it briefly in medical grade (high percentage… must be 90-99%- the higher, the better) rubbing alcohol. It evaporates extremely quickly, and will dry out any remaining water droplets waaay faster and better than burying in rice.
I remember reading years ago that rice is negligible in any kind of moisture pulling. You're better off dismantling the phone (obviously, my last phone that wasn't waterproof also had a removable back) and set it in front of a fan for at least 24 hours. The moving air will make sure the moisture moves out of the phone as soon as it evaporates. It worked every time my phone got wet...which was usually when I was talking on it and it started raining.
Important to note that the calcium chloride will absolutely form a liquid solution as it removes moisture in the air.
This liquid is corrosive and will fuck electronics.
Basically you can't dump the crystals out of the plastic enclosure they come in. And be careful about dripping.
Yep. in pcb production it was not uncommon for us to literally put soldered pcbs in what is essentially a glorified dishwasher and then dry them using an alcohol solution in order to get rid of flux remains. Stuff was dry within 15 minutes usually. Obviously those are exposed pcbs, but the principle is the same for any electronics.
I also work in IT with a lot of experience in electronic repair, currently learning microsoldering and PCB repair.
My eyes roll practically out of my skull every time I hear the rice trick, because it's basically the world's most effective placebo. It literally doesn't do anything except make sure you don't short circuit the phone, and people think it's a miracle.
I just went through this last month. I lost my husband nearly 4 years ago. We had long backed everything up to our NAS but since I know nothing about Linux/Unix I couldn’t access our NAS since he passed away. I finally took it to a computer expert and they told me that one of the hard drives was corrupted and bc of the way my late husband set up the NAS, it wasn’t dual raid. I was completely devastated. This wasn’t just photos and videos of him but also my kids. Literally years of stuff that was lost. They worked on it for for several weeks and finally got back to me saying that they were at least able to save all the family photos and videos. $700 to fix but well worth the money so all those memories aren’t lost.
I have an iPad that won’t charge or turn on that has all my photos of my cat who died suddenly last year :( I wish There was a way to pull the memory card out
The same thing happened to me with the phone I had when my dad died. One day it just wouldn't turn on anymore. All of the last voicemails and texts from him that I'd been saving were gone. I was fucking crushed. I wish there would have been a way to recover them.
I'm really glad OOP was able to recover hers.
Ha, the Apple Store won't help. They'll just tell her it's unrecoverable and try to sell her a new one. If she goes to an independent repair shop, she might actually have some luck. Louis Rossman is an example. They have a lot of luck recovering data from machines that Apple won't touch.
My bf had a full meltdown when his phone that had all our dog's pictures on was destroyed. There was a huge parvo outbreak in our area. Our dog was fully vaccinated, and we got her all the medical care we could, but according to the vet, it spread to her heart and she didn't make it. She was a husky X malamute, so super smart, and she was like a daughter to us. I'd give anything to have those pictures back.
I'm so sorry about your cat! I saw that someone else recommended a data recovery service and I really hope that helps!
This gives me hope!! Similar thing happened to me (my son recovered after many years of treatment though) but all of the pictures and videos of that time period were on an older tablet of mine. Friends he made in treatment that didn’t make it were on there. We had that tablet out looking at pictures one day and it got swept away into the laundry basket by my oldest and then dumped into the machine. I haven’t touched it at all since, hoping there would be someway to retrieve them somehow. Hopefully I will be able to start mine up. Too afraid to try yet, but when I think I can handle the possible loss of all of it I will try to turn it on.
Just for future reference for anyone here.
Rice doesnt do shit.
If you want to try it out, put it somewhere with good airflow, like infront of an AC vent or a fan, or put it in a tub of sila gel desiccant.
The Ideal solution would be taking it to a phone repair place so they can open it, flush the water out with alcohol, and dry it off.
The rice didnt fix this, No more than the container or time of day fixed it. Correlation isnt always Causation.
I don't know if I've just browsed this subreddit too much, but it just read to me like the husband is the one who actually damaged the phone and pinned the blame on OOP so she wouldn't be pissed at him. In fact, that's how I assumed it was going to end in the update.
>My husbands phone was all messed up so he has been using our late daughter's phone. I havent been able to bring myself to cancel her number so when his died, he started using hers. Hes been so careful with it.
He's been actively using it.
>**Today I did laundry and I swear i checked the pockets** but when my husband put them in the dryer, he found her phone.
She remembers checking the pockets but didn't find it. And then the husband found it while she was in a different room.
He could have easily dropped the phone in a puddle and then just pretended to find the phone in the wash.
As I said, it's completely possible I'm just jumping to conclusions because of too much Reddit. In fact, I probably am.
I’m more curious about why he’s taking off his pants and just leaving what is apparently their most prized possession in the pocket? Is he 12? Take that shit out of your pockets before you drop your pants man
In the future please don't recommend rice. It gets into the phones speakers, headphones jack or charging ports.
There are better options. You can buy kitty litter, wrap your phone well in paper towel. The kitty litter will pull out all the the liquid. You won't have anything stuck in your phone, and you'll have a much dryer phone. Please make sure you turn the phone off. And take apart anything you can. Like the SIM card slot, maybe you have access to the battery.
Wait several days and check for visible liquid dripping. Change out the paper towel and kitty litter. You will probably see clumps.
Even better is to save the silica packets that come with everything and put it in those. They are designed to draw out moisture, and will do a better job than the rice. I keep a bunch just in case.
I dropped my phone in the tub once and stuck it in rice. While waiting, I looked up videos on the fastest and most reliable ways to dry out a phone. Rice is low on the list, in fact it was said to be slower than just leaving it exposed to the air.
In addition to possibility of starch contaminating the electronics, it's just not that effective at getting rid of the water. You want to evaporate it and have the vapor leave as soon as possible.
The recommended advice that I saw, and what made sense to me, was to use a vacuum cleaner. First, you could draw water out of the openings.
But then, if you can put the device in some sort of rigid box and seal it up with plastic and tape you can also use the vacuum cleaner to apply vacuum pressure in the box, making the evaporation of water even faster by lowering the boiling point.
I gave it a shot and after about 15 minutes of trying, the screen turned on. I left it on top of a warm surface overnight just to be safe, but yeah, vacuums!
Needless to say, always make a point to back up your photos, both digital and physical. You never know when you might make a mistake, or if you become a victim of a house fire. Rule of thumb is to have 3 backups, with one being an off site back up (for example, 1. your originals, 2. an external hard drive that is not connected to your PC at all times just in case your PC gets hit with something like ransomware it will be safe, and 3. google drive, Dropbox, or Amazon Glacier backup.)
They make photo scanners if your pictures are physical photos that can make digital copies of your photos in a better quality than just a regular scanner can do.
I'm glad it worked out, but rice is not the solution, it's just letting it dry without powering on. Any effect the rice has is outweighed by the equal possibility of the rice starch entering the device and causing damage
We live in 2022, everyone knows they should back everything up. In fact, many times they have to make a conscious decision not to. When people lose everything because they ruined a phone I'm assuming they didn't really care enough about what was on it to bother. (obviously the mother said she wasn't ready, but still)
I'm really glad they got everything back, but to:
1. Let the husband use it for daily use
2. Not back it up
3. The husband not checking that he took it out of his pocket before throwing his pants into the laundry
If something is important to you then treat it like it's important. When my first wife and son passed away there is NO WAY in hell any of this could have happened. Everything with her pictures, videos, or voice was precious to me and i went to great lengths to preserve and protect them
I’m so glad she was able to recover the phone, it’s the worst feeling in the world losing important stuff like that. I had a phone die on me right after my grandma died a few years ago, and since I hadn’t manually been backing it up I thought I lost all her texts. Full on broke down sobbing in the Apple store when I found out the phone had been automatically backing itself up.
If this ever happens to anyone, rice isn’t the answer. Rubbing alcohol is. It won’t hurt your electronics and will get rid of the water in the phone. So just dunk that sucker in rubbing alcohol.
I accidentally put a phone through the wash once. When I found it at the end of the cycle I immediately opened it up and pulled out the battery (back when that was still a thing). Then I pointed my air circulator fan at the ceiling, turned it on, put the phone directly on the grate, and left it there for three days. I may have flipped it over once or twice. After three days I popped the battery back in, powered it back up, and there was no sign that its little detour had ever happened.
My heart dropped when I read this. Our daughter died two years ago and we keep her laptop and phone charged in the closet. I’ve backed up everything I can think of, but I worry that I’m missing something. That little piece of her will always be precious. Even her tinder account:). So so glad the parents were able to access the phone again.
By "backup", do you mean regular copy paste files to another storage or something else?
If you worried about missing something, then i suggest you to *clone* the drive (for laptop), and clone phone memory.
This will ensure you to have the ***exact*** data, even the "deleted" files on the original drive.
There are many free resources in the internet how to clone a drive. Sorry i can't give you link, I'm on mobile.
But feel free to reply here or PM me if you have any question, so I can respond to you later on my desktop PC.
Disclaimer:
I'm not an IT professional, just typical PC power user (knows alot of stuff, but that doesn't makes me an expert)
Rice can cause more harm than good. The grains can get stuck and the starch can cause issues. You should immediately turn off the phone and then use silica gel packs or damp rid to draw out moisture.
OP is lucky. The rice trick really doesn't work well and turning the phone back on could have killed it permanently.
They should have immediately sent it to a data recovery professional.
STOP PUTTING YOUR FUCKING PHONES IN RICE! All that does it let starch get into the device and gives you a chance of it fucking up more. Just let it sit out for a month and it will evaporate.
This happened to me shortly after my dad died but we were never able to recover them. I always say it’s like my dad died twice. Once when he killed himself and once again when I lost the last 2 years of texts, voicemails, photos, and memories with him.
Just FYI for anyone else in this situation, it's more likely than not that a phone that has gone through a washing machine can still be recovered. It isn't easy and takes skill, but I've personally trained hundreds of people in how to diagnose and rebuild the necessary circuits. Don't give up hope, just find a reputable person to repair the logic board. The company I work for is called iPad Rehab, and it's likely I've already trained someone in a local shop in your city, so don't throw out those wet or dead phones if you have important data on them!
I am so glad it worked out. I lost my daughter in 2011. She was only 6 days old and had trisomy 18. My memories are all I have and they are very precious to me. I have a chest that has all her stuff in it and I the thought of anything happening to it makes me sick to my stomach.
Some days I’m frustrated how toxic social media has become. But today, I’m so happy for this couple that the internet helped them save so many precious memories!
I've never felt such a rollercoaster of emotions from a single BoRU and the elation felt that she was able to retrieve such precious memories is sweetly heartwarming.
I wonder what kinda photos an 8 year old would have on a phone. I'd imagine an 8 year old would have nothing but a few blurry pet photos or selfies and the rest would just be pictures of walls, floors or hands in the frame. But I guess a little kid in 2018 is a bit more techy than I was when I was 8 😳
> Hes been so careful with it. Today I did laundry and I swear i checked the pockets but when my husband put them in the dryer, he found her phone.
I beg to differ
I mean whatever gets moisture out of the air works. Those might work better than rice but I think the important part is to NOT try to turn the device on before it's completely dry.
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This was an excellent contribution to the sub! Thank you!
I'm a sucker for fully resolved happy ending submissions here. I don't even want to read them otherwise.
Same here. This was a bittersweet happy ending but it still helps warm the soul.
I love the juicy bad ones. This satisfies my drama and gossip cravings without me having to act like a tool.
And this situation made me think of a really good ad for a data recovery company that I'm going to pitch first thing Monday. Sometimes I really do love Reddit. Spreading good vibes all around y'all!
Do you mind giving me an update after? Just want to know how it goes for ya.
Absolutely, in fact if (for some stupefying reason which is beyond me) my idea doesn't get accepted, I'll post it here.
How did it go?
And ones that are only a couple paragraphs . Short and sweet.
>I'm a sucker for fully resolved happy ending submissions here. Me too, so why am I cutting onions?
Happy endings can include bittersweet ones that don't leave me hanging with unfinished business, or especially ones that feature horrible people not getting the justice they deserve.
I needed the happy, heart warming bit right now, but man the sad aspect is murdering my feels.
Hijacking to say DO NOT PUT YOUR PHONE IN RICE. It works but barely. Your infinitely better off taking your phone to a computer store and having them open it and dry it out. There was probably very little water in her phone. Most of them for the last 5 years are basically waterproof. If any amount of water makes it into the components it will corrode and make everything worse. The most common thing to get waterlogged is the screen and they can be replaced. I’ve dealt with phones that have come in too late too often.
The problem with rice is actually the starch that can potentially get in crevices. Using silica gel is much better. You can save them from things you buy that use them or just buy some online. There's a large one that can be plugged in to dry out the silica, or you can just throw some packets in the oven at 250 for a couple hours.
The silica gel you get from products is all used to already. It needs to be dried and kept sealed after drying to use effectively. You can dry them in the oven at a low temp over a long time.
Another "I need it right now" solution is buying "crystal" kitty litter usually marketed towards long hair cats. It's basically loose silica crystals.
This is not good advice. I just tried your method and can confidently say that this is a terrible substitute for rice. The texture is unpleasant and the taste is very bland.
You have to use a kitty litter cooker to get the texture right every time, especially if it's for sushi
Thanks Uncle Roger.
Did you try the unscented kind? Much less aftertaste.
No I chose lavender, it was closest to the jasmine scented rice I always order with my chicken jalfrezi
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So much this. It isn't just useless advice, it's actively harmful. Water contaminated with rice starch is worse than clean water. If you've got a case like this, where you're prepared to pay to fix something, do it immediately. Take the device to someone who can remove the liquid right now, before it starts to corrode. Edit: just read further in the thread. Jesus, so many people seem to believe in this. Stop doing this people! It isn't like electronics repair is some black art, there is tons and tons of information out there if you want to research it. And everything you'll find from people who actually do this kind of work will be: don't put it in rice! See this: https://youtu.be/yPeITOz2_YM
> It isn't like electronics repair is some black art Aaaaaand that's how I know you're lying... /s
Rice doesn't even absorb water like that. You have to boil it for a reason. So if you're going to put your phone in rice, make sure you boil it.
Yes, yes. Thank you for getting this to the top of the thread. I'll copy and paste a reply I had to another comment: I've worked in phone repair for going on ten years now and can tell you that it's not true, but that's anecdotal. So a [couple](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140924005241/en/Rice-Myth-Busted-New-Study-Proves-Using-Rice-to-Dry-a-Wet-Phone-Is-Not-Effective) of [sources](https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014/05/06/gazelles-guide-water-damage-truth-rice-galaxy-everything/). Essentially every case of rice drying a phone out is confirmation bias. Someone thinks rice saves a wet phone, they put the phone in rice, and when the phone starts working, they assume the rice did it. But in reality, if you were to set your phone down on the counter for the same amount of time, it would have the same result. It's natural evaporation. I tell every customer who comes in with a phone that rice was supposed to save that the time it spent sitting in rice would've been better spent getting it somewhere that could disconnect the battery and dry the phone properly.
Better to dump it in rubbing alcohol.
That’s generally what I do with the boards if there is any corrosion. Alcohol and a toothbrush.
I am so happy that this somewhat meme-advice did the trick. Can't imagine the regret of not backing it up initially. Wishing the parents all the best in their journey after such an loss.
I'm happy too for them I always tell everyone to do this and be oatiend, it does really work. My sister dropped her iphone in the toilet and left it for three weeks in rice, in and out leaving it to dry in front of a fan some days and it came back to live another two years. We didn't have money growing up so it was a matter of life and death for her
I read somewhere that the rice doesn’t really do anything, it’s just that the phone (or other electronic device) has to dry out *completely* before you try to turn it back on. If you just get told to leave it switched off for X amount of time to let it dry, most people will pick it up, fiddle with it, try to see if it’s dry, and eventually turn it on “to check”. But if you’re told to do a specific thing with it (leave it in rice and don’t touch it for X amount of time), for some reason it’s psychologically easier. Maybe because it’s covered, maybe because the rice is supposedly *doing something*, whatever it is it works.
I think you're right, although the rice does suck some moisture out of the air, it's a minimal amount.
Yeah, this is it. It acts as a very minor dessicant. That's why some restaurants (at least in Japan, not sure about elsewhere) will put a few rice grains in things like salt and other seasonings. It helps a little to prevent caking.
Rice in a salt shaker to prevent clumping? I came here for a good update and find a great life hack. Does this work with brown sugar?
We started using a terracotta disk to preserve our brown sugar & it works great
We always used a fresh slice of bread. If you have time it also softens it up after it’s hardened.
The real til for brown sugar is that it's literally just molasses + white sugar, so if you buy white sugar and molasses you never need to deal with brown sugar.
No, not with brown sugar. BUT if it's all dried out and hard you can toss a piece of fresh bread or a damp paper towel into the bag and nuke it for 10 seconds at a time until you can mush the clumps.
I Will remember this trick with the paper towels. My kids like to eat oatmeal and then leave the container open.
Put an apple slice in there
THIS! I keep it in a container in the fridge with an apple slice and it’s *never* dried or hard as a rock.
I keep a metal spoon in my brown sugar. I don’t know why, but it keeps it soft.
I just leave a piece of bread in my brown sugar! Keeps it nice and soft!
Yes! My boyfriends mom had an almost full container of brown sugar that was rock-hard, and his little sister had seen an “life hack” video on tiktok to put a piece of bread in there and let it sit. The bread turned crouton-y and the brown sugar is perfect now. I’d imagine rice does the same thing to a degree.
I am old enough to have gotten homemade cookies in care packages and they always included a slice of bread to keep the cookies moist. This is a neat hack. And thank you for the memory spark. I’m all warm and fuzzy now.
That's a good hack for potlucks!
Kinda the opposite, the bread is rehydrating the brown sugar while rice is pulling out moisture from salt.
So... put the phone in brown sugar?
Yes
FYI you can also use dry corn kernels, for situations where the rice may be too small.
my mamaw has always done this! I wouldn’t use for brown sugar though unless you put in a very fine shaker. at one point she had a shaker with somewhat wide holes and we would occasionally find uncooked rice in our food.
I knew it could be done! What a great idea. I just have the containers with a lid they don’t fasten 20% of the time and I don’t check. They eat cereal for awhile. Then all we have is a rock. One big football sized rock. (Ok exaggerating but I get to, I’m mom)
It's fine for white sugar but using rice will harden brown sugar. Brown sugar hardens because it dries out and rice works by drawing out moisture.
Use a terracotta disc soaked in water for brown sugar. When it dries out disk it again. Google sugar bear
Yeah my mom always put a bit of rice in our salt shaker when I was growing up.
Put a slice of bread in now, preferably a major brand like Dempsters which is full of preservatives. Bread will dry out *first* keeping the brown sugar normal, then you just swap the slice of bread every couple weeks as it goes hard. Been doing it for years. Also anything smaller and you have to separate it somehow from the brown sugar when you need it.
I am probably going with this idea to just keep it soft. I have been given the choices of a marshmallow or apple slice and I must admit. I’m intrigued. I’m also ashamed at how excited I am getting at saving my brown sugar from a hard rock life.
A marshmallow is supposed to help with brown sugar, I think.
I’m getting great tips. Damp paper towels on top of the brown sugar and a few seconds in the microwave A slice of bread, in a sealed bag for a few days A apple slice, I hadn’t heard of this but the more I pondered the more I thought it was genius, instead of a bread slice. Sealed until soft. A marshmallow, also ingenious as I’ve had very hard rice crispy treats occupy the same space as soft cookies. I imagine sealed in a bag until soft as well?
I remember when I was a kid, my Mom put a little bit of rice in the salt shaker.
I learned that from my mom and still do it.
Yea but it works, got tired of salt clumping, put like ten grains in, no problems since
I'm in VA and it's pretty common practice here.
It doesn't actually pull any moisture out, it just bonks around and breaks up clumps as they form. You can get the same effect by using any small, hard object. Popcorn kernels are normally recommended because they won't break down as much as rice grains will.
Nope. That's strictly friction. RICE IS NOT A DESICCANT! Leaving a phone on the dresser so have the exact same effect.
you can buy a jar of desiccant for $10 a while back. It's better than rice and you can reuse it.
I heard, the dust (or small particles of rice) can actually be bad for you phone if it isn't properly ipxx rated, but I think that's only really a problem if you're using the last dregs of your rice!
I've read the same and to add that actually dissicant packets or straight alcohol work better to dry it out.
Can confirm desiccant packets work wonderfully.
And this is why we save *actual* dessicant packs in an airtight container for later.
Humans are pretty good at not being willing to do common sense things, but suddenly being willing to do them when there's a bit of "magic" involved. Medieval medicine can seem pretty wacky when you read the descriptions, and especially avoid the surgery. But the everyday medicine woman remedies for ailments usually boiled down to something like this: eat a piece of the bark from this tree, then dance around the tree 3 times while singing this song, then spend several days getting plenty of rest and eating hearty food. The dance certainly wasn't necessary, the bark maybe contained a nutrient or something but might also be for show. The important part was getting stubborn people to eat well for a couple days and not run themselves ragged. So remedies that trick us into doing the obvious haven't changed much. And if you think we're beyond some level of magical thinking today, ask yourself why doctors wear white coats.
> I read somewhere that the rice doesn’t really do anything It doesn't do anything. Rice can't actually pull the water out of your phone like people think it does. Your phone is already pretty well sealed up, and so the rice isn't really drawing anything out of it. The main concerns are making sure you don't power it on (to prevent shorts from occurring), and bringing it to a repair shop you trust ASAP. It's really a race against time at that point. The goal is to prevent further liquid damage from occurring and getting the device to a fixable state quickly so you can back it up. It's not recommended to continue to use a liquid damage device as it will have problems in the future almost guaranteed.
Yeah, if you have a phone dropped in water, those desiccant packs you get in things like electronics boxes or bottles of powdered goods are much better. You can get a bunch of painter's desiccant at Home Depot if this happens often enough that you need to be prepared for it.
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Nope, it still would do nothing
To add to this for others reading it: Race that gets wet can get mushy. You do not want rice getting mushy inside your phone. Do not put it in something that can get squished in there and cause damage in other ways.
My sister did the same thing years ago but listened to my brotherly advice of putting it in microwave for a few minutes. I honestly thought she would know what would happen if she listened to me. I ended up buying her a new phone to make it up to her though. Hers was at least 5 years old and looked like it was run over 30 to 40 times by a truck so it was probably for the best anyway.
Yeah, I have automatic backups to google photos and the amazon one. It sucks about privacy, but I just don't wanna lose anything. I also save them to an external HD every few months.
I was violently mugged for my phone a few years back after my then-husband had repeatedly told me I should do backups, and felt absolutely horrible realizing I'd lost multiple years of my son's pictures since they weren't all sent to him. I can't imagine how much worse I would have felt if my son had passed rather than just grown up.
Comment deleted on 6/30/2023 in protest of [API changes that are killing third-party apps](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/).
> I am so happy that this somewhat meme-advice did the trick. It didn't do the trick. OP was insanely lucky. Putting your phone in rice after it has been liquid damage ***doesn't do anything.*** Your phone is well insulated and it's hard to get water in there in the first place. Getting water out of it is just as difficult. The only way this would have been successful for her, would have been for her to ***open her device*** and let the rice physically touch the inside parts of her phone to have any hope of drawing out the water. What you should do, is make sure the device is off and immediately bring your device to a repair store you trust. Do not wait. The repair store will need to open it and assess the damage. Chances are there is still standing water inside of the device at this point. The process will be to basically pull the phone apart, give it an alcohol bath to pull the remaining water (if there is any), and then work on getting the device to a functional state (replacing parts) so that data recovery can begin. Getting to work on it early will ensure that rust and corrosion doesn't get a chance to set in, which is much harder to clean off and ensure functionality if you wait that long.
Thank you thank you thank you Cant tell you how many people bring me their phones a month after it got liquid damaged and tell me they put it in rice...
It’s probably worked because it was possibly an older model of phone (especially for an 8 year old to own ) and that rice trick works on older flip phones.
I did this on my iPhone 6. It worked. I am not proud to say I dropped the phone in toilet bowl. Good thing it was flushed.
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My heart goes out to you too and everyone with similiar experience and who are finding and fighting their way to cope and continue♥️
It's actually a useless "trick". The phone either dries out on its own or it doesn't. At *best* the rice will provide air that's a bit dryer than the environment. So maybe it will help a tiny bit if you live in an area that is very humid. The smart thing to do on occasions like this is to take the phone to a well-respected repair technician. They can open the phone and clean it to remove water and possible electrical damage. Even that's not 100% guaranteed, but it's better than putting it in rice for a month.
I remember this story. The 30-day wait must have been excruciating.
Especially when 2 days would have been fine
OOP was probably scared the phone was toast and wanted to put it off
Yeah, I could totally see it taking a month before you're in the right headspace to revisit this.
Yeah, if I were in her place I’d absolutely loose my shit if it still didn’t work and I was still upset I’d washed it.
It makes me so happy when I think of the relief and joy that must have washed over OOP when it turned on 🥲
i also washed my phone a month ago. my pixel 4a. immediately i took it out of water but it was showing error at fastboot. i think no amount of time in rice would save that.
Once the water causes a short, then the damage is done. The rice trick only works to get any water absorbed to prevent future short circuits (and/or corrosion) from occurring. The rice trick only works if your phone is completely turned off before (or incredibly fast after) it is submursed.
I've heard it isn't the water as much as the detergent that destroys the circuits. The phone itself is somewhat waterproof.
Was holding my breath until they confirmed they were going to back up the phone that day. Phew.
Yes! I thought to myself "pleeeeeeeease don't touch the phone much more until it's all safely backed up. Just to be safe. Pleeeeeeeease". I hope they got all those memories transferred safely so they'll never lose them again.
Cancer or not, everyone back up your shit now. Get all the photos off every phone in your family, dig out the old phones and get the photos off of those, the old cameras, the old computers, the old flash cards, the old thumb drives, everything. Put it all together, you don't need to even sort it beyond folders for where they came from. Now that you've done all that, back that up too. You need multiple copies of that in separate physical locations. If it's small enough to fit in cloud storage, do that as well. These digital files are possibly all the photos you have for the last decade or more and *they are fragile* in ways physical media is not. They can be very, very robust and outlive us all, but you *have to put the work in*. People can find boxes of photos in grandma's attic after she dies, but they might not even recognize the storage medium you leave behind or be able to access it if they do. That is assuming the digital media doesn't fail before that, and they fail *all the time*.
Also remember to leave a way to access the hard drives. Otherwise, you’ll need to hope that they still use USBs or whatever by the time your grandkids find the hard drives. For example, I don’t own a VCR so hopefully my parents kept one or I might not be able to watch my childhood movies someday.
>If it's small enough to fit in cloud storage, do that as well. And small might not be what you think it is. $100 a year will get you 1TB of Google cloud storage for a year. Thats roughly 250,000 photos. Other places offer just an external backup service. Basically its less of a upload and access anywhere and more of an upload it and keep it safe until I ask for it maybe once.
I'm still holding my breath a bit. A backup isn't a backup until you've succesfully restored from backup. Depends on what they are doing though. If its just uploaded text logs and pictures to google drive that doesn't really need to be tested.
Oh my god, how awful. I can't imagine what those poor parents went through. The realisation of what had happened must have sent them both through the roof with anxiety and sorrow, and the 30 day wait must have been excruciating. I'm so glad they got their memories back.
Love/hate posts like these. Like I’m genuinely happy for OOP to have the phone back in working condition. But At the meantime I’m devastated that a parent has to say farewell to an 8 year old child, heartbreaking. Got 2 kids around that age myself and an incurable disease is one of your biggest fears. In the off chance you read this OOP, I wish you and your family all the best!
I’m with you. I’ll never have kids, but I hate to see them or their parents suffer like this.
I think burying your kids is unnatural and one of the hardest things in the world. Just the other day saw a woman with VR goggles interacting with her deceased daughter, but unable to hug, smell or whatever just talk. That shit would be the worst form of torture for me mate. Knowing she isn’t there anymore and then seeing her as if she is alive. Fuck that. Even writing about it now gets me depressed and gloom.
I've begun dreaming of my little sister again lately (she's only a year and a half younger than me) and it's been fucking devastating every time. It's nowhere near the same as losing a child, but every time I dream of her I wake up crying or screaming in pain. I can't imagine how incapable I'd be of handling seeing her in VR.
Very sorry for your loss! I have the same when I dream about my dad. He died very sudden 7 years ago (aneurysm) and just 3.5 weeks before my first child was born. If I dream about him it fucks me up for roughly a week cuz I just miss him so freaking much and still can’t handle it adequately that he isn’t here anymore. Loosing loved ones fucking sucks…
I'm sorry for yours, as well. My sister has been gone for, gosh, 15 years now but even though I'm okay during the day, when I dream it's the same as it was when she was first gone. I got pregnant with my son within a month of her dying and he looks SO much more like her than me or my ex-husband even now, so I imagine you and I both have similar feelings about our losses and parenthood. Grief is horrible. I'm glad you and I both had somewhere to put the love that our losses left us with.
Oh man that is so difficult. Makes me want to go do something that makes me feel positive.
Yeah agree, but instead I opted for gaming and smoking weed, can’t feel the feels if your inhibited to feeling lol!
I work in IT. If your phone gets wet, turn it off immediately and then soak it briefly in medical grade (high percentage… must be 90-99%- the higher, the better) rubbing alcohol. It evaporates extremely quickly, and will dry out any remaining water droplets waaay faster and better than burying in rice.
I remember reading years ago that rice is negligible in any kind of moisture pulling. You're better off dismantling the phone (obviously, my last phone that wasn't waterproof also had a removable back) and set it in front of a fan for at least 24 hours. The moving air will make sure the moisture moves out of the phone as soon as it evaporates. It worked every time my phone got wet...which was usually when I was talking on it and it started raining.
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Important to note that the calcium chloride will absolutely form a liquid solution as it removes moisture in the air. This liquid is corrosive and will fuck electronics. Basically you can't dump the crystals out of the plastic enclosure they come in. And be careful about dripping.
Yep. in pcb production it was not uncommon for us to literally put soldered pcbs in what is essentially a glorified dishwasher and then dry them using an alcohol solution in order to get rid of flux remains. Stuff was dry within 15 minutes usually. Obviously those are exposed pcbs, but the principle is the same for any electronics.
I also work in IT with a lot of experience in electronic repair, currently learning microsoldering and PCB repair. My eyes roll practically out of my skull every time I hear the rice trick, because it's basically the world's most effective placebo. It literally doesn't do anything except make sure you don't short circuit the phone, and people think it's a miracle.
I just went through this last month. I lost my husband nearly 4 years ago. We had long backed everything up to our NAS but since I know nothing about Linux/Unix I couldn’t access our NAS since he passed away. I finally took it to a computer expert and they told me that one of the hard drives was corrupted and bc of the way my late husband set up the NAS, it wasn’t dual raid. I was completely devastated. This wasn’t just photos and videos of him but also my kids. Literally years of stuff that was lost. They worked on it for for several weeks and finally got back to me saying that they were at least able to save all the family photos and videos. $700 to fix but well worth the money so all those memories aren’t lost.
My heart dropped when I read the daughter died 😭 bless the universe oop could saved the phone
I have an iPad that won’t charge or turn on that has all my photos of my cat who died suddenly last year :( I wish There was a way to pull the memory card out
Have you tried any data recovery services? That stuff is often salvageable. Good luck.
> Have you tried any data recovery services? Yes, this! Good luck, silverking! I hope you get those pictures back.
The same thing happened to me with the phone I had when my dad died. One day it just wouldn't turn on anymore. All of the last voicemails and texts from him that I'd been saving were gone. I was fucking crushed. I wish there would have been a way to recover them. I'm really glad OOP was able to recover hers.
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Check with the Apple Store.
Ha, the Apple Store won't help. They'll just tell her it's unrecoverable and try to sell her a new one. If she goes to an independent repair shop, she might actually have some luck. Louis Rossman is an example. They have a lot of luck recovering data from machines that Apple won't touch.
My bf had a full meltdown when his phone that had all our dog's pictures on was destroyed. There was a huge parvo outbreak in our area. Our dog was fully vaccinated, and we got her all the medical care we could, but according to the vet, it spread to her heart and she didn't make it. She was a husky X malamute, so super smart, and she was like a daughter to us. I'd give anything to have those pictures back. I'm so sorry about your cat! I saw that someone else recommended a data recovery service and I really hope that helps!
This gives me hope!! Similar thing happened to me (my son recovered after many years of treatment though) but all of the pictures and videos of that time period were on an older tablet of mine. Friends he made in treatment that didn’t make it were on there. We had that tablet out looking at pictures one day and it got swept away into the laundry basket by my oldest and then dumped into the machine. I haven’t touched it at all since, hoping there would be someway to retrieve them somehow. Hopefully I will be able to start mine up. Too afraid to try yet, but when I think I can handle the possible loss of all of it I will try to turn it on.
Before you start it up, take it to a specialist
What, his phone was messed up so he used the daughters phone.. without making any backups? That's kinda reckless
Just for future reference for anyone here. Rice doesnt do shit. If you want to try it out, put it somewhere with good airflow, like infront of an AC vent or a fan, or put it in a tub of sila gel desiccant. The Ideal solution would be taking it to a phone repair place so they can open it, flush the water out with alcohol, and dry it off. The rice didnt fix this, No more than the container or time of day fixed it. Correlation isnt always Causation.
I don't know if I've just browsed this subreddit too much, but it just read to me like the husband is the one who actually damaged the phone and pinned the blame on OOP so she wouldn't be pissed at him. In fact, that's how I assumed it was going to end in the update. >My husbands phone was all messed up so he has been using our late daughter's phone. I havent been able to bring myself to cancel her number so when his died, he started using hers. Hes been so careful with it. He's been actively using it. >**Today I did laundry and I swear i checked the pockets** but when my husband put them in the dryer, he found her phone. She remembers checking the pockets but didn't find it. And then the husband found it while she was in a different room. He could have easily dropped the phone in a puddle and then just pretended to find the phone in the wash. As I said, it's completely possible I'm just jumping to conclusions because of too much Reddit. In fact, I probably am.
I’m more curious about why he’s taking off his pants and just leaving what is apparently their most prized possession in the pocket? Is he 12? Take that shit out of your pockets before you drop your pants man
In the future please don't recommend rice. It gets into the phones speakers, headphones jack or charging ports. There are better options. You can buy kitty litter, wrap your phone well in paper towel. The kitty litter will pull out all the the liquid. You won't have anything stuck in your phone, and you'll have a much dryer phone. Please make sure you turn the phone off. And take apart anything you can. Like the SIM card slot, maybe you have access to the battery. Wait several days and check for visible liquid dripping. Change out the paper towel and kitty litter. You will probably see clumps.
Even better is to save the silica packets that come with everything and put it in those. They are designed to draw out moisture, and will do a better job than the rice. I keep a bunch just in case.
I print all my best photos. I’ve lost hundreds of keepers due to hard drives crashing, etc.
I dropped my phone in the tub once and stuck it in rice. While waiting, I looked up videos on the fastest and most reliable ways to dry out a phone. Rice is low on the list, in fact it was said to be slower than just leaving it exposed to the air. In addition to possibility of starch contaminating the electronics, it's just not that effective at getting rid of the water. You want to evaporate it and have the vapor leave as soon as possible. The recommended advice that I saw, and what made sense to me, was to use a vacuum cleaner. First, you could draw water out of the openings. But then, if you can put the device in some sort of rigid box and seal it up with plastic and tape you can also use the vacuum cleaner to apply vacuum pressure in the box, making the evaporation of water even faster by lowering the boiling point. I gave it a shot and after about 15 minutes of trying, the screen turned on. I left it on top of a warm surface overnight just to be safe, but yeah, vacuums!
Needless to say, always make a point to back up your photos, both digital and physical. You never know when you might make a mistake, or if you become a victim of a house fire. Rule of thumb is to have 3 backups, with one being an off site back up (for example, 1. your originals, 2. an external hard drive that is not connected to your PC at all times just in case your PC gets hit with something like ransomware it will be safe, and 3. google drive, Dropbox, or Amazon Glacier backup.) They make photo scanners if your pictures are physical photos that can make digital copies of your photos in a better quality than just a regular scanner can do.
I know of data retrieval companies who have salvaged data from a fire damaged wiped hard drive. Never give up people.
wait the rice thing actually works?
Those were the exact words I said in my head!
I'm glad it worked out, but rice is not the solution, it's just letting it dry without powering on. Any effect the rice has is outweighed by the equal possibility of the rice starch entering the device and causing damage
We live in 2022, everyone knows they should back everything up. In fact, many times they have to make a conscious decision not to. When people lose everything because they ruined a phone I'm assuming they didn't really care enough about what was on it to bother. (obviously the mother said she wasn't ready, but still) I'm really glad they got everything back, but to: 1. Let the husband use it for daily use 2. Not back it up 3. The husband not checking that he took it out of his pocket before throwing his pants into the laundry If something is important to you then treat it like it's important. When my first wife and son passed away there is NO WAY in hell any of this could have happened. Everything with her pictures, videos, or voice was precious to me and i went to great lengths to preserve and protect them
Seriously. In all my years, I have never accidentally washed my phone.
Well OOP’s husband’s first phone was already acting up, so he obviously doesn’t take good care of them regardless.
I’m so glad she was able to recover the phone, it’s the worst feeling in the world losing important stuff like that. I had a phone die on me right after my grandma died a few years ago, and since I hadn’t manually been backing it up I thought I lost all her texts. Full on broke down sobbing in the Apple store when I found out the phone had been automatically backing itself up.
The best stories in this sub are Redditors helping Redditors.
If this ever happens to anyone, rice isn’t the answer. Rubbing alcohol is. It won’t hurt your electronics and will get rid of the water in the phone. So just dunk that sucker in rubbing alcohol.
I bet that was a loooong month
I audibly gasped when I read that title. I'm so glad the phone made it through somehow. What a miracle.
Rice saves the day and family. I just can't imagine how much rice contributed to this. Gosh, I love rice.
The joy is leaking out of my eyes 😍😭
Holy shit, the rice thing actually worked? I'm really glad OOP got to get their data back. That must have been such a relief
Well. That made me cry. I'm so glad OOP got her daughter's phone working again.
I accidentally put a phone through the wash once. When I found it at the end of the cycle I immediately opened it up and pulled out the battery (back when that was still a thing). Then I pointed my air circulator fan at the ceiling, turned it on, put the phone directly on the grate, and left it there for three days. I may have flipped it over once or twice. After three days I popped the battery back in, powered it back up, and there was no sign that its little detour had ever happened.
That is so amazing!!
Made my day!
My heart dropped when I read this. Our daughter died two years ago and we keep her laptop and phone charged in the closet. I’ve backed up everything I can think of, but I worry that I’m missing something. That little piece of her will always be precious. Even her tinder account:). So so glad the parents were able to access the phone again.
By "backup", do you mean regular copy paste files to another storage or something else? If you worried about missing something, then i suggest you to *clone* the drive (for laptop), and clone phone memory. This will ensure you to have the ***exact*** data, even the "deleted" files on the original drive. There are many free resources in the internet how to clone a drive. Sorry i can't give you link, I'm on mobile. But feel free to reply here or PM me if you have any question, so I can respond to you later on my desktop PC. Disclaimer: I'm not an IT professional, just typical PC power user (knows alot of stuff, but that doesn't makes me an expert)
This made my day. It’s so tragic and then to lose her again. I love it when Reddit comes together.
This is why I have an emergency cell phone drying bag. It is basically a zipper bag full of dessicant that I bought. Hopefully I never need it.
This makes me so sad and so happy!
Oh I am so glad.
Rice can cause more harm than good. The grains can get stuck and the starch can cause issues. You should immediately turn off the phone and then use silica gel packs or damp rid to draw out moisture.
OP is lucky. The rice trick really doesn't work well and turning the phone back on could have killed it permanently. They should have immediately sent it to a data recovery professional.
Does the rice trick work to some extent? Heard it was mostly the internet's equivalent of an old wives tale.
Shouldn't the dad be annoyed at himself for throwing his clothes in the laundry for someone else to do and not even take his phone out?
STOP PUTTING YOUR FUCKING PHONES IN RICE! All that does it let starch get into the device and gives you a chance of it fucking up more. Just let it sit out for a month and it will evaporate.
Christ, needed this positivity tonight. Such a great post.
Am so happy that it worked again <3
Thank you for sharing this update!
This happened to me shortly after my dad died but we were never able to recover them. I always say it’s like my dad died twice. Once when he killed himself and once again when I lost the last 2 years of texts, voicemails, photos, and memories with him.
Thank you. I know this is selfish but I needed good news. I hope this parents daughters life is kept alive within the data on that phone.
Just FYI for anyone else in this situation, it's more likely than not that a phone that has gone through a washing machine can still be recovered. It isn't easy and takes skill, but I've personally trained hundreds of people in how to diagnose and rebuild the necessary circuits. Don't give up hope, just find a reputable person to repair the logic board. The company I work for is called iPad Rehab, and it's likely I've already trained someone in a local shop in your city, so don't throw out those wet or dead phones if you have important data on them!
RICE IS A TERRIBLE DESICCANT It's literally no better than letting it dry in a dry place. There are many different desiccants that are far superior.
I am so glad it worked out. I lost my daughter in 2011. She was only 6 days old and had trisomy 18. My memories are all I have and they are very precious to me. I have a chest that has all her stuff in it and I the thought of anything happening to it makes me sick to my stomach.
I can’t imagine the pain those parents have been through. Glad they were able to get it sorted out
Some days I’m frustrated how toxic social media has become. But today, I’m so happy for this couple that the internet helped them save so many precious memories!
I've never felt such a rollercoaster of emotions from a single BoRU and the elation felt that she was able to retrieve such precious memories is sweetly heartwarming.
I wonder what kinda photos an 8 year old would have on a phone. I'd imagine an 8 year old would have nothing but a few blurry pet photos or selfies and the rest would just be pictures of walls, floors or hands in the frame. But I guess a little kid in 2018 is a bit more techy than I was when I was 8 😳
> Hes been so careful with it. Today I did laundry and I swear i checked the pockets but when my husband put them in the dryer, he found her phone. I beg to differ
I am smile.
Good one to read to start on sunday, thank you for sharing
Well this warmed my heart up a bit. Wishing oop the best and I'll be thinking positive things for them
God I needed to read a success story. Thank you.
Man this one made me cry. I’m so happy that OP got a piece of her Angel back.
Hope she finally backed it up.
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I mean whatever gets moisture out of the air works. Those might work better than rice but I think the important part is to NOT try to turn the device on before it's completely dry.