The Effect of Water Damage
It is important to act fast when your phone or tablet gets wet. Water and electricity simply don't get along, so a wet device could short out and even give you an electric shock. At best, a bit of water will condense on a hot circuit board or processor and cause damage to the screen, while water can find its way into bezels, slots, under the screen and into the battery cavity.
Basically, letting your phone or tablet (or laptop) get wet is a bad idea, and requires you to act as quickly as possible.
First Things First-Turn It Off!
If your phone has been exposed to enough water to make you concerned, the first thing you should do is turn it off! Not all phones will allow you to remove the battery, but if this option is available to you, do this rather than turning the device off.
Disassemble What You Can
Fortunately phones and tablets don't come apart too easily. If they did, they'd probably fragment each time they were dropped!
However along with the battery, there are at most two other items that should be removed. The first is the SIM card, which you should retrieve, dry and keep somewhere safe. Following this, if your device has a removable SD or micro SD card, this should also be removed and dried.
The reason for this step is simple-water gets everywhere! By removing these two cards, you can dry the slots where they are housed with some tissue paper, soaking up as much water as possible.
Drying the Phone or Tablet
Don't stop with the SIM and SD card slots,however-any water you can find on your switched-off device should be blotted up as quickly as possible.
What follows is a list of suggestions for alternative methods of moisture removal from your hardware, but in the meantime, before reaching that stage, ensure all water droplets around the edge of the display, on the display itself, around any screw holes and bezels (in fact, everywhere on the exterior of your phone or tablet) is soaked up with tissue paper or kitchen towel.
Without taking the device apart (something that in itself is dangerous and with the added moisture drops trickling around becomes smartphone-suicide) this is as dry as you will be able to physically get it.
But what about the insides? Fortunately, there are a couple of tricks you can use.
Drying the Inner Workings
Inside a smartphone or tablet computer you will find processors, circuit boards, button rockets- all places where water can find a home and cause damage. With your waterlogged device quickly switched off and the SIM and micro SD card removed, however, you are in a strong position to recover the device.
You just need to dry the bare circuit board, wires and processors inside.
Hairdryer: with your hairdryer on a low setting and your phone held far enough away that you won't burn your hand, use the hot air that it projects to dry your phone, spending some time focusing on the battery and SIM/micro SD card slots (in order to push warm, drying air ito the device). Be careful when warming the screen, however, as you don't want to cause damage to the touch-screen interface. Continue this for up to 30 minutes, maintaining an even covering of warm air.
Oven: placing your phone or tablet on a small empty box on an oven tray and setting the oven to its lowest setting is one other way that you might dry the internal components of your device. Your oven's lowest temperature (110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit) shouldn't cause any damage to your device, but you'll need to leave it in overnight or until done.
A Bowl of Rice: While you might have to head to the local convenience store, a bowl of dry, uncooked rice is perhaps the most successful solution to any water damage to your phone or tablet. You'll need to pack it into a container big enough to hold your hardware and a good layer of rice -about 1 inch on all sides but the foodstuff will soak up almost all of the moisture overnight, leaving you with a fully working device.
