Was your cell phone recently dropped in water or exposed to moisture? Does there seem to be liquid or moisture underneath the screen? Is your cell phones screen fogged up from within the device? Has your phone had time to dry after having been dropped in water and seems to have water marks or a left over residue where the water had gotten into the phone? Here are some tricks that might help resolve your current predicament.
Cut the power
If there is any sign or indication of moisture on or within your phone then the first thing that you must do is to stop using your cell phone. If possible remove the battery and cut all power to the device. If your phone is designed with a non-removable battery then power the phone off. Do this as quickly as you can. Electricity and moisture do not bode well with one another and when it comes to cell phones you want to try to avoid any unnecessary electrical shorts as this could lead to permanently damaging your phone and its hardware.
Take all of the pieces off
Go ahead and remove all of the pieces from the phone such as its back plate, a SIM card, an SD card, its battery (as mentioned already), etc. open up all of these areas to allow the phone to breath a bit and to locate possible moisture around these parts. If any of these parts are wet then go ahead and dry them off with a clean dry cloth.
Dry the phone
If it appears that moisture is still present within the phone then you are going to want to remove or eliminate that moisture as quickly as you can. Here are some methods that you can use that can help speed up the drying time.
Vacuum
If you have access to a vacuum then you might be able to suck a lot of that moisture out of the phone. Use your hand as a suction cup around the end of the vacuums hose and suck out the battery compartment and around any ports of the phone where liquid or moisture may have gotten into.
Before using a vacuum you might also want to ground yourself first to eliminate some of the static electricity that you might have built up in your body. Touching a metal table, metal service sitting on the ground, or any plugged in electrical product with a metal ground pin should help you rid yourself of any static electricity and help you avoid an electric shock.
Rice
Uncooked rice or instant rice is a well known tool which can be used to help absorb moisture and help speed up the drying time of your smartphone. Just keep all of the pieces that you took off of the phone aside and burry your cell phone in rice within a sealed air tight container such as a piece of Tupperware or a Ziploc bag. This will allow the rice to absorb moisture from your phone and not from the air in the room. You might also consider rapping your phone in a thin napkin or other thin material to help prevent rice from going into any places it shouldn’t. You don’t want a piece of rice to find its way into your SD card slot or SIM card port or fall into the hole where you insert a headphone jack.
Silica Gel Packs
Silica Gel Packs work even better than rice and are one of the most effective ways to eliminate moisture from a cell phone. If you have some of these packets lying around the house or if you want to buy some online they are pretty affordable and these cute little silica gel packets are made for absorbing moisture and they do a pretty good job at it too.
Just like the rice you can place your phone in a sealed container with a few of these packets and let them start drawing that moisture out of the phone.
Desk lamp and or windowsill
If you don’t have access to any silica gel packs and you’re currently out of rice then you may be able to put your phone under the light of a desk lamp or on a windowsill on a warm sunny day. These two heat sources should be gentle enough to apply enough warmth to the screen in order to speed up the drying process while at the same time not applying too much heat which could actually damage the phone.
Cleaning left over water marks
If your phone has had time to dry and you can see where liquid used to be underneath your phones screen because the liquid left behind a mineral deposit or water mark or stain then you might be able to clean those marks up using 99% isopropyl alcohol.
Alcohol
99% isopropyl alcohol shouldn’t leave behind any residue once it’s had time to dry and is a great choice to use as 99% isopropyl alcohol can not only clean out any mineral deposits or gunk left behind in the phone it can help absorb any lingering moisture, its non conductive, and dries very quickly.
If your phone has these marks underneath its screen and you would like to get rid of them without having to take your phone apart then you should certainly consider following the advice listed at how to use 99% isopropyl alcohol on a phone that’s been dropped in water or exposed to moisture. I think it might just be exactly what you need.
Enjoy your clean screen
Thanks for reading. I hope that you have found the advice list above informative and helpful and with it you should be able to remove the moisture from underneath your phones screen or clean up any leftover marks that may have remained after the phone had time to dry.
If you have any more tips or tricks that you happened to use to clean or dry off the inside of your phones screen then don’t hesitate to let us know about the circumstances that led up to your little misadventure and what you ended up doing to fix it in the comment section below.
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Thanks again and I hope you have a wonderful day.
2 thoughts on “Water or moisture trapped under your phones screen? Do this…”
I love this
I love this, it works!
Moisture trapped in phone
Good info.