Your iPhone is in your shirt pocket, you lean over when you happen to be near a body of water such as, say, a toilet, and the iPhone falls in the water. Yikes! Fortunately, this hasn't happened to me yet, but it does seem like it is just a matter of time. Thus, my interest was piqued when I saw the website iMore "review" a $6.95 product called the Thirsty Bag from iFixit, a company well-known for fixing iPhones. You place an iPhone (or camera or iPod or other electronic device) in the Thirsty Bag as soon as possible after it gets wet, and the two Molecular Sieve pouches in the bag remove all of the water from the device so that it (hopefully) works again. You can also remove the two pouches, put them in a larger Ziploc bag, and use the product to fix a wet iPad.
I put the word "review" in quotes because iMore didn't actually dunk an iPhone to try out this product, they simply describe how it is supposed to work, much like I am doing here. Even though I do have some old iPhones in my house, I don't want to risk destroying them simply to review a $7 product, so I don't plan to review the Thirsty Bag myself either. Hopefully, I will never be the unfortunate victim of the scenario outlined at the start of this post, but I am thinking about buying one just in case. Obviously, to take advantage of a Thirsty Bag, you have to already have it in your possession so that it is nearby soon after your iPhone takes a swim. I suppose it is a $7 insurance policy, albeit one that is not guaranteed to work.
What about other solutions? A few years ago, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times got Verizon to give him a few phones that he could destroy, and he tried out several methods of drying them out. His full article, and the video segment he did for the CBS Early Show, are here. In short, he found that kitty litter or white rice can sometimes do the trick. The iFixit website claims that the Thirsty Bag is better for these reasons:
Unfortunately, rice is not an effective desiccant for a couple of reasons. Rice has a low capacity for atmospheric absorption. It may absorb the liquid water on the case, but our real problem are the tiny drops inside. Also, as rice sits on your shelf, and the shelf at the store before you bought it, in unsealed boxes and bags it slowly sucks in water out of the atmosphere around it, reaching it's absorption capacity. Thirsty Bag Molecular Sieve pouches are sealed at the factory where they are made, and not exposed the the atmosphere for longer than 2 minutes during packaging where they are resealed and prepared for you.
Whether you purchase a Thirsty Bag or just have a gameplan for quickly getting kitty litter or rice, it is good to spend time now thinking about what you will do if your iPhone or iPad gets wet.
