Fun fact: that’s not how humidity works. It, in fact, DOES help to get water to evaporate by forcing the local humidity around the phone to stay low. Otherwise you may as well say all the people doing 3D printing that use desiccant to keep water out of their filaments are fools, too.
What it won’t do is magically erase any gunk or minerals that were in the water that can short out traces on unprotected PCBs and chips even with the water gone.
So, yes, it is not magic that can fix any phone that saw water. Though it absolutely helps to get the water out of the phone. … I mean, unless you live in a desert where the humidity should already be sufficiently low most days.
Sure, but rice is a shitty desiccant. If it weren’t, it would cook easier and we would ship things with packets of rice rather than silica gel.
Silica gel is a great desiccant. Just because rice cannot match something basically designed for the task, doesn’t make it awful.
You might as well be saying, “but my horse cannot run fast! He’s always behind Secretariat!”
It makes it awful for the purpose of drying wet electronics. It actually impedes the drying process by preventing air from circulating. Plus rice is typically dusty, and you don’t want rice dust in your damp electronics.
You’ll have a dryer device much faster if you just point a fan at it.
It may not be an industrial-grade desiccant, but the major advantage of rice is that people tend to have it at home…
I have a mason jar full of the desiccant packets that come with the random crap I order. I hang on to them in case my phone decides to go swimming. I recommend it to people, but I don’t think I’ve made many converts lol
Just remember that dessicant (including rice) should be dried out in the oven if you’re going to expect it to drop humidity below normal ambient humidity. Obviously not baked, but a few hours at ~180F to ~220F will dry out most dessicants. Some are really hydrophillic, though, and might take even higher temps.
Usually the kinds that dry out at lower temps are labeled as reusable or similar terminology. (unless it’s a disposable packet, then it’s what ever the hell they decided to throw in there).
I didn’t know that, thanks!
Shit I just dropped my phone in the sink! Just give me a minute to hop online… Commercial grade desiccant… 7-10 days shipping… Buy now… Great! In a week I’ll have the driest phone ever!
Good point. I’ll use diatomaceous earth next time.
Dammit - now I’m cringing at the thought of datomaceous earth in the USB port!
Is this how I debug my phone?
Dealing with humidity is one thing, but it’s terrible at drawing “whole” water out of something.
And it’s not the water that’s the problem, it’s like you said, it’s the gunk and minerals it leaves behind.
Isopropyl alcohol will push water out of any cracks and crevices, if you’re able to submerge bare boards in it. If you do it before the minerals have a chance to dry and corrode, it will get pushed out with the water.
Again untrue whatever you think is “whole” water, any dessicant will absolutely undoubtedly help with evaporation.
Not every person is tech savvy enough to open boards. Advice for most novices is still put phone between dessicant to get water out of the device is valid and good advice.
Would using isopropyl alcohol be better option? Sure it is. but telling my aunt to do it, and device will probably die because she doesn’t know how to handle pcbs anyway. I’d much rather just advice using dessicant and hope mineral residue doesn’t sort anything. And I’ll continue with that advice forever.
But it doesn’t help with evaporation. It actually prevents it by preventing air from circulating.
I brought a wet AirPod back from the dead last week using rice. It does work, sometimes.
It would have probably been faster to just set it on a windowsill or somewhere with adequate airflow.
It doesn’t, what you’ve got is either a device that was sufficiently waterproofed (Which maybe aren’t AirPods waterproof?) and just needed the liquid to clear out on its own
Or a device that’s working on borrowed time, the minerals have still been deposited on electronic components after the water evaporated on its own. Devices can take some shorting here and there, but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes too much. Could be a few days, couple of weeks or even months and then POOF dead for good
best way I’ve found to isolate and repair water damage is to open it up and apply some high quality liquid rosin to the water damaged areas. then hit it with hot air (300c should be fine) to get the rosin under all chips and connectors. lastly, do not clean the board, it can push the corrosion around and cause more issues.
You are just trolling right?
no. if you want to do component level board repair for water damge, this is how you do it professionally. I’ve been using this strategy for 5 years or so now and it has much better success rates than just cleaning the board with ipa.
maybe overkill for most people since it requires more specialized tools but if you go to a shop they’ll most likely use similar techniques at least to assess the damage
I mean, solder melts at temperatures lower than 300 degrees Celsius.
depends on the type of solder but yeah, I’m not exactly holding it there tho. just high airflow at that temp for a few seconds to push the rosin underneath the chips. helps a lot with bga chips where water can actually get underneath the chip and short connections or leave debris even once evaporated. for actually reworking chips I use around 480c.
I thought the whole purpose of the joke, the punchline, was that leaving your phone in rice would attract an Indian to the food, who would compulsively fix the phone for you. That’s what I heard in school with that joke anyway
Nah, this little bit of wisdom has been around since flip phones in the early 2000s era. That’s long before there were any businessmen cooking up various franchises based around variations of 'fix’ation.
So you thought the purpose was overt racism and you’re ok with that.
To be fair, they didn’t say they were okay with it 🤷♂️
