Dropped my phone in some water and got it to miraculously come back to life!

The other day I did something really foolish. Some people were having a get together at this fancy bar that has a feature where there is a swimming pool with barstools submerged in the pool and it's a pretty great gimmick actually. The place is called Kala Kala and I have avoided it in the past because during their peak hours that place is packed and really loud. But a friend of mine informed me that during the day almost nobody goes there and it could be a nice spot to sit and hang out and have a few drinks.

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_{photo taken from the internet because, well, you'll find out in a minute...}

I was extra delighted to find out that during the day before 4pm, you are allowed to bring small well-behaved pets with you to this place provided that they do not get in the pool. This is not an issue with Nadi because she hates getting in water so she just sat on a chair in the shade while my friends who were already there beckoned me to come and join them in the water. I put down my dog and like an idiot teenager jumped immediately into the water. Hooray! Right?

Well, it took me about 2 sips into my ice cold beer that was handed to me (in a can, no glass in the pool!) before I realized i had made a very critical error in my enthusiasm for joining my friends in the water.

My phone was still in my pocket

I did something really silly at that point and frantically pulled my phone out of my pocket and held it up in the air as if the damage wasn't already done. I would imagine that my phone was completely underwater for a good 5 minutes at that point and I do not have some fancy Apple phone where it is designed to be underwater for prolonged periods of time.

I didn't try to turn it on until it has been in the sun for a while but as you might expect, it did not turn on.

This kind of ruined my day to some extent because I hate it when I allow my jubilee to get in the way of my sensibility and end up destroying something that costs $500 in just a few minutes.

Well, that is what I thought at first anyway but then the advice started coming from my pals about that old trick about putting the phone into some rice for a few days.

I went an extra step and not only put the phone is a box of dry rice but also placed it directly on top of my dehumidifier for extra drying power. Before I put it in there though I removed the simcards and noticed that one of them had some scorch marks or rust on it and that may have been from a short that zapped the phone in the first place upon getting in the water. I don't know for sure because it's not like I look at my simcards every day.

After the first night spend in the rice bed I was pretty happy because my phone switched on but then kind of let down when it was really slow, was getting hot very fast, and then switched off. Ok, nothing to panic about right? I'll just leave it in there another day. Day two was better but the simcards would only stay activated for a couple of minutes at a time and this was not very helpful for data. I was going to be one of those guys that has to ask for the Wi-Fi password everywhere that he goes. So I waited yet another day, then cleaned the simcards with rubbing alcohol and dried them very thoroughly, and by day 3, everything was working like it did before!

But there is something that came out of all of this at the same time though and that was the realization that I should be more prepared for this sort of situation. I didn't currently have my stuff backed up to an easy-to-access location that could help someone if they lost their phone or it was stolen...or if they behave like a dumbshit and jump into a swimming pool with a phone in their pocket.

The thing that concerned me most was my 2FA, which I foolishly didn't have backed up anywhere else. This is primo-level jackass stuff right here. After that 3 day waiting period that was really stressful had passed, I pulled an old phone out of storage, booted it up and then backed up the 2FA there as well. It is also probably near time for me to get a new phone anyway and if I end up doing that, I am going to have them show me about backup methods that are a bit more complete. There probably already is a way but I am one of those sorts of users that doesn't like having his information stored all over the place.

Anyway, this was a stressful couple of days because I was searching my mind frantically trying to think about if my 2FA could possibly be stored somewhere else and if you use 2FA you should probably think the same. If nothing else, store that thing on a seriously trusted friend or family member's phone. I already learned this lesson once when a previous phone died and I ended up getting locked out of my MexC account. I never did regain access to it and while I don't think I had very much in there, it was more than zero and that always kind of hurts.

Anyway, I don't have a top-end phone and I think that maybe they have improved the technology over the years so that it can withstand being shorted out provided you are patient enough and have access to rice. I've been told that silica gel or desiccant packets work even faster if you suddenly find yourself in a similar situation.

This was a wake up call that could have ended up much worse than it did. Thank you rice!