The first few minutes after your phone gets wet are the most important. What you do — or don’t do — in that window can be the difference between a full recovery and a phone that never works again. The instinct most people have is to try something, anything, to fix it fast. But some of those instincts will make things significantly worse. Read this before you reach for the bag of rice.
The First Five Minutes Matter Enormously
Water and electronics don’t mix because water conducts electricity. When water gets into a phone’s internals and power is still running through the components, it creates short circuits — unintended electrical paths that damage chips, corrode connections, and can permanently destroy components that might otherwise have survived.
This is why the very first thing to do is turn the phone off. Not just lock it. Power it down completely. If it’s an iPhone, hold the side button and a volume button and slide to power off. If it’s an Android, hold the power button and select power off. If the screen isn’t responding, on most phones you can hold the power button for ten seconds to force a shutdown.
Every second the phone stays on while wet is a second during which electricity is running through wet components. Get it off.
What You Should Do
Once it’s off, here’s the right sequence of actions.
Remove the case. Phone cases can trap water against the device and prevent it from drying. Get it off immediately and set it aside.
Remove the SIM card. The SIM card tray is a small opening in the phone’s frame, and water can pool around it. Pop the tray out using the provided tool or a small straightened paperclip. Set the SIM and tray aside on a dry surface.
Gently pat dry the exterior. Use a dry cloth or paper towel to carefully blot any visible water from the phone’s surface, including around the charging port, speaker grilles, and the SIM card slot. Be gentle — you’re not trying to force anything dry, just removing surface moisture.
Leave it in a warm, dry place. Set the phone on a dry cloth or paper towel in a warm room. If you have a bowl of silica gel packets — the little sachets that come inside shoe boxes and electronics packaging — placing the phone in a sealed bag with those is far more effective than rice. Silica gel actually absorbs moisture efficiently. Leave it for several hours without attempting to turn it back on.
Get it to a repair shop as soon as possible. Ideally within 24 to 48 hours. More on why in a moment.
What You Should Not Do
This is equally important, because the wrong response to a wet phone can be as damaging as the water itself.
Don’t put it in rice. We know you’ve heard this advice, and it’s genuinely well-intentioned, but it doesn’t work. The idea is that rice absorbs moisture, but rice cannot pull water vapour out from inside a sealed device at any meaningful rate. The phone’s internals are protected by seals, gaskets, and a tight chassis — moisture gets in through gaps and openings, and rice sitting around the outside cannot draw it back out through those same tiny gaps quickly enough. Worse, rice contains fine starch dust that can work its way into the phone and cause additional problems. The rice myth persists because sometimes the phone was going to survive anyway, and people credit the rice. Don’t credit the rice.
Don’t use a hairdryer. Heat is the enemy here. Blowing hot air into a phone forces moisture deeper into the device rather than drying it. Worse, excess heat warps the logic board and other components — circuit boards have very specific thermal tolerances, and a hairdryer can exceed those in seconds. If you’ve seen advice to use a hairdryer on a low, cool setting, that’s marginally better, but still not recommended. Just let it air dry.
Don’t try to charge it. This is critically important. Charging a wet phone is one of the fastest ways to cause permanent damage. When you plug in a charger, current flows through the charging contacts. If those contacts are wet, you’re creating a short circuit deliberately. Wait until the phone has been properly dried and assessed before you plug in anything.
Don’t shake the phone. The instinct is to shake the water out, but shaking spreads water further into the device. If water is sitting near the speaker grille, shaking pushes it towards the logic board. Leave the phone still.
What Water Actually Does to a Phone
Understanding the real mechanism of water damage helps explain why speed matters so much. When water enters a phone, the first risk is the short-circuit damage we’ve already discussed. But if the phone survives that — because you switched it off quickly — there’s a second, slower-acting risk: corrosion.
Water, especially water that isn’t pure (which includes tap water, rainwater, sea water, beer, coffee, and almost everything else) contains minerals and salts. When these dry on the phone’s circuit board, they leave a residue. That residue is electrically conductive and acts as a pathway for current to flow where it shouldn’t. As the phone operates over the following days and weeks, that residue causes corrosion that slowly destroys connections on the board.
This is why a phone that seems perfectly fine immediately after getting wet can fail completely a week later. The corrosion was happening quietly the whole time. It’s also why professional cleaning — where the board is properly cleaned with specialist solutions to remove all residue — is so much more effective than waiting and hoping.
What About IP Ratings? Isn’t My Phone Waterproof?
Many modern smartphones carry an IP rating — IP67 or IP68 being the most common on flagship devices. These ratings are real, but they’re commonly misunderstood.
IP67 means the device was tested to withstand immersion in up to one metre of still, clean water for up to 30 minutes under laboratory conditions. IP68 means it was tested to a greater depth — typically 1.5 to 2 metres, depending on the manufacturer’s specification.
What these ratings don’t mean: your phone is waterproof in all conditions, forever. IP ratings are tested on new devices. Wear, drops, and minor impacts can compromise the seals over time without any visible damage. The rating also doesn’t cover running water (which exerts higher pressure than still water), salt water (which is corrosive), chlorinated swimming pool water, or other liquids. Beer, coffee, and juice are particularly damaging because of their chemical content.
Manufacturers are also clear that water damage isn’t covered under standard warranty, regardless of IP rating. We see plenty of water-damaged phones that were rated IP68. The rating reduces risk — it doesn’t eliminate it.
Come and See Us
If your phone has been exposed to any liquid, bring it to GenioTech as soon as you can. We’re at 29 Hilltown in Dundee, open Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm, and we offer a free diagnosis — we’ll open it up, assess the extent of the moisture and any early corrosion, and give you an honest picture of what we’re dealing with.
We have the tools and experience to clean boards professionally, and the sooner you get it to us, the better the odds of a good outcome. We won’t charge you just to look. And if the damage is beyond economical repair, we’ll tell you that too rather than take your money for nothing.
You can also get in touch before you come in if you’d like to speak to us first. But honestly, if your phone just got wet — close this tab and bring it in. Time is the one thing you can’t get back when it comes to water damage.