Okay, so I admit that I like kitten pictures. (I?m not really a super warm and fuzzy person, but small pets just crack me up.) So imagine my surprise when, right next to my Cute Overload feed, I see this in my RSS feed reader:
Use Cat Litter to Save Your Doused Cellphone (Lifehacker)
A post about phones AND cats? I?m all over it.
Actually, as the headline indicates, it's about using kitty litter to save a drenched cell phone from the garbage heap. So not only is this blog post cute, but it's useful as well. And since I destroyed my mobile phone once by getting thrown into a swimming pool, clothes and all (darn spring break!), I felt it was my duty to pass along this handy tip.
Here's the gist: Putting a cell phone in cat litter, which is designed to absorb moisture, helps pull the wetness out of the handset ? even from its tight nooks and crevices. The kind used in this post was dried clay litter, though there was no mention if other types work.
Steps:
(1) Take out the battery
(2) Wrap the phone in a towel
(3) Put cat litter in a container (or use the container it came in)
(4) Place the phone on the mound of litter. Do not bury it inside, just place it on top. (This was obviously clean cat litter, because otherwise ? yuck. Even if it worked, would you want to put it up to your face after that?)
(5) This is the hardest part: LEAVE THE DEVICE ALONE. Seriously. You will want to keep checking it occasionally, it's natural, but please don't do what the author of this post did, which is power up her damp G1 after only a couple of days.
In general, two days probably won't be long enough. In this case, the writer's screen still showed some moisture, so the phone went back into the litter until it dried completely. But what could've happened is a short that could've fried the phone.
No cat litter? The post also suggests soaking the handset in alcohol and burying it in rice. To be honest, I don't think I?ll be trying that one. Dunking a phone in anything just seems like a bad idea. But to be fair, I haven't tried it, so I won't say it doesn't work. I?m just skeptical.
Dropped your phone in the toilet or got drenched in a downpour? How?d you fix it? Share your tips below.
[via Lifehacker and Geek News Central]
