A wet phone is a clock, and the first ten minutes decide most of the outcome. This protocol takes that seriously: it is ordered by what permanently damages a phone versus what merely wastes time. Follow it top to bottom and skip nothing that applies.
Minute 0-2: out and off
Fish it out, power it off completely, and take the case off. If it was salt water, pool water, or anything beyond plain fresh water, rinse briefly with fresh water — counterintuitive, but dried salt and chlorine keep conducting and corroding long after the phone looks dry. Powering off is non-negotiable: a wet phone that stays on risks short circuits on every trace the water touches. If it shut itself off, leave it off; do not “test” it by pressing the power button repeatedly.
Minute 2-10: gravity and the obvious
Wipe the outside dry, remove SIM trays and any accessories, and prop the phone with the speaker and charging port facing down at a slight angle. Gravity does free work here: water runs toward the openings and out. Shake gently once or twice — a soft motion like closing a suitcase, not the aggressive rattling that flings droplets deeper inside.
Minute 10-20: the eject tone
Once the worst is off, power the phone back on only if it behaves normally when dry on the outside — a phone that flickers or heats up stays off and goes to service. A working phone gets the eject tone: speaker down, volume at maximum, one 15-second run, repeated up to three times. You are removing the water you can hear — the muffled-speaker water — before it evaporates into vapor that condenses somewhere worse, like under the screen.
The next day: patience beats folklore
Leave the phone in dry room-temperature air, port down, for hours — overnight is the honest answer for a real dunk. The folklore gets people here: rice sits in a sealed bag doing almost nothing while a phone in open dry air dries faster, hairdryers push water deeper and cook adhesives, and charging a wet phone is the single most destructive move in the whole story — the iPhone guide covers the port warning Apple shows for exactly this reason. The timeline below condenses the whole hour; follow it and most splash victims leave with nothing but a good story.
