DampRid to the Rescue: Cell Phone + Water = Disaster

I must share this embarrasing moment with the world so that others might have the same luck as I have recently had after DROPPING MY CELL PHONE IN THE TOILET while it was flushing! (My phone is pretty outdated and slow and I was planning on getting a new one.)

Fortunately, 80% of the water had flushed, so it was only submersed for about 2 seconds. As soon as I grabbed the phone, I immediately POWERED IT OFF, just as I had recalled reading in the incredibly useful Apple Core Blog at ZDNet by Jason O'Grady in his article HERE: How to survive an iPhone liquid submersion (hint: it's not rice). The blog gives step by step instructions on how to increase your odds of success.

Unfortunately, I had to run to a meeting and did not have time to go to Lowes, so I did in fact put my phone in an airtight lock-n-lock container with about a cup if rice. Three hours later, I went to Home Depot, (in the pouring rain no less) and purchased 1 box of DampRid that comes in 2 "Sachet" bags. I followed The Apple Core steps, sandwhiched the phone and kept it sealed in a ziplock bag for about 30 hours.

I nervously turned on the phone, and noticed a faint charge symbol illuninated on the screen - almost as if the screen was broken at 10% brightness, so I plugged it in. Five minutes later, my phone came back from the dead with the sound of 40 texts and no voice message notifications*!

*One thing that really saved me was being able to forward my phone to Google Voice. I called ATT at 11 PM that evening and spoke to their after hours tech support crew. They were able to forward my phone to my designated Google Voice number. The great thing about Google Voice is that any messages are transcribed to text. Very helpful. I was going to forward all calls to a new Skype number, but that was $18/3 months, so I held off on that option.