Can Rice Save Your iPhone?

Hi everyone, apologies for the long radio silence as I've been totally swamped with work and various other activities. Plus, I am still working on kicking my addiction to "Restaurant City" on Facebook. Facebook is a terribly dangerous site because they have such mundane yet addictive games. First I suffered from a massive addiction to "Mafia Wars" to the extent that the poor cabbie has had to u-turn and drive back a full 10 minutes to my home amongst other things. Then it was "Vampire Wars", thankfully that didn't last too long because I was soon swept up in an obsessive "relationship" with "Restaurant City". *patting black panda eyes*

Now, this blog entry is not about food per se but about how I am attempting to use a staple food to "save" my iPhone after a "drowning incident".

A colleague of mine had sent a few of us an email with a tip on how to "save" a drowned iPhone or iPod Touch. The tip involved placing the drowned item into a bowl of uncooked rice, the author had advised readers to "soak" the iPhone in raw rice. I found the use of the word "soak" hilarious but couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the day. So much for laughing at bad English, retribution was swift.Remember the saying, "Careful what you wish for, lest it come true"? As Rhonda Byrne, author of "The Secret" would put it, whatever you think of will manifest itself because you "attracted" it.

Unfortunately for my iPhone and I, Law of Attraction or not, I'm such a scatterbrain that I'm an accident waiting to happen. Long story short, my musing that evening over the matter of rice being used to remove moisture from a soaked iPhone resulted in my spilling water onto my iPhone by accident and leaving it in a shallow bath for about half a minute before I realised what had happened. My instinct was to press the "power" button, the screen came on and then went off. Rats!!!

I guess I shall have to test if the tip works. I panicked and placed my iPhone in a pot with some raw rice, then realised that rice was getting into my earphone jack, which incidentally was dripping water as I tried to remove the rice granule. Double sh*t! I didn't realise that the water had gotten into the jack as I thought that the phone was partially protected by the case. Scolding myself for forgetting to cover the openings, I placed the phone into an organza bag.

Here's a picture of my "Rice" C U (a rice-based Intensive Care Unit). On day 2, I decided to buy some dessicants from Daiso and popped it into the pot. I had chosen a glass covered pot so I can peek ever so often at the "patient" whilst waiting a week (as prescribed by many forummers).

I "visited the patient" on Sunday, wondering if I should attempt to resurrect it from the dead. As my friend, Ed so eloquently put it: "Water coming out of the headphone jack is equivalent to vomitting blood". Thanks, dude, I feel so much better already!

A quick check of the dessicant bag showed that there had been quite a bit of moisture absorbed by the silica gel, I hope it was mostly from the ambient air.

Hmm...better wait out a week to prevent any more damage to the circuitry by putting a current through still moist components. So I buried my poor iPhone back under the rice, stuck more dessicants into the pot and decided to wait till tonight (day 7) to attempt an iPhone Resurrection. Failing which, I have a few more weeks till I'm eligible for my first year upgrade to the iPhone 3GS. Will keep you posted on the results of the 1 week "Rice" C U test.

Wish me luck!