Rice is for dinner, not repair | Hacker News Reader

Rice is for dinner, not repair

ifixit.com

28 pointsjedberg10 comments

Rice is also full of dust and small particles which are surely not good for your electronics.

On the other hand, iFixit’s proposed solution of disassembling the device and washing it with alcohol is not going to work for an iPhone or any other sealed, glued device with special security screws, unless you already have a full repair kit in your home and ready to go when the water accident happens.

They say that the next best solution is to just leave the powered off (assembled) phone exposed to air.

That's the ideal solution. Their proposed solution is to turn it off immediately and just let it dry, without rice or anything else.

> Rice is also full of dust and small particles which are surely not good for your electronics.

More than pockets, dust/grease on your hands, whatever's in your hair while you call, etc? The phone is surrounded by so much dirt, I'm not sure rice would make a difference.

> We have done nothing but experienced temporary luck.

This feels a lot like all the "experts" saying that baking a dead graphics card in the oven couldn't possibly fix it, even though many individuals have found that it actually works (at least temporarily). I fixed a card this way once, and it didn't stop working before I upgraded to a better card a year later.

Maybe Jessa Jones is right and I'm just imagining things, but it really feels like rice works better than nothing when trying to save water-exposed electronics. I'm not sure I can accept this appeal to authority without proof. I want statistics! Does anyone know of any empirical studies on the subject?

I don't forsee anyone doing randomized controlled trials on something like this.

That wet sponge experiment they referenced seemed pretty darn convincing to me.

It worked on my phone. Fell on the toilet, shut it down immediately, put in rice for 12h. You can clearly see the rice getting moistened gradually around the phone. Maybe it would have worked anyway, but I would still do the same.

while by no means perfect or in any way a real alternative for a proper strip and clean its far more effective to use silica gel (commonly and cheaply available as crystal cat litter) should be no real need to bury it either just sit it on a piece of cloth in a tupperware box full of the crystal, pop the lid on and put it somewhere warm

personally i both have the tools and the experience to do a proper repair should such a thing happen but my phone is waterproof anyway

another potentially more out there solution may be to dunk it in isopropyl alcohol which should mix with the very small amount of water and allow it to evaporate more easily but it may also stain the casing or the lcd and also isnt really ideal with the battery connected

Oh man, does your keyboard not have punctuation?

Probably an Apple laptop.

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