Did you jump into the pool or walk in the rain with your phone in your pocket? Well, in either case, the bad news is that you have damaged your phone.
The moment you buy a smartphone, it’s just a matter of a short time before you damage it in any way and water incidents are some of the most common ones. When you accidentally dunk your phone in the water, moisture build-up inside of it, eventually causing damage to your phone. If you have been in such a situation and want to know how to get water out of the charging port, you are at the right place.
In this detailed guide, we have summed up all the effective methods from around the world to get water out of a charging port. So, let’s quickly dive into the guide to bag all the essential tips.
Things to do immediately when your charging port gets wet
- Dry your cell phone using a towel
- Turn it off
- Remove the SIM and battery (if doable)
- Hold your phone straight with the charging port facing the ground and firmly tap your phone to empty the water.
- Lastly, put your phone in a dry sock and blow cool air in it for at least 3 hours.
It is a tried and tested hack for emergency situations. Whenever your phone gets wet, just remember these instructions.
Note: Keep away from using silica gel packs, rice, cat litter, or any heat source, as they don’t work well. In many cases, they can permanently damage your phone.
How would you know if your charging port is wet?
When your charging port or cable is wet, you may see an alert stating, “Liquid Detected in Lightning Connector.” This is how you can confirm if there is any water in your charging port.
Since the charging port is a wide opening that extends to the inside of your phone, it can immediately make your phone wet. There can be many instances where you end up getting your phone wet. However, here are some of the most common ones:
- Rain: If you walk in the rain without an umbrella or a waterproof jacket, your phone can get wet. It will retain moisture, and you will get to know about it later.
- Shower: Obviously, nobody takes a shower wearing pants, but some take their phone with them for whatever reason and end up getting their phone wet. When you shower and have a phone inside the bathroom, the moisture and heat build-up inside your phone, causing it damage.
- Spilt drink: Accidentally spilling drinks (hot or cold) is another reason your phone gets wet and damaged eventually.
- Pool: This often happens when you forget to take out your phone and jump right into the pool.
For any reason, now that your phone is wet, what’s next? How would you get water out of it?
How to get water out of charging port?
When your phone gets water damaged, you need to be patient and give ample time for your device to dry. Keep in mind that never go for the ‘Emergency Override’ option, as it could be damaging to your phone.
Moreover, depending on the damage you have done to your device, you might be able to continue using it while it dries.
Now check out the below tips for ejecting water out of your phone’s charging port. Go for whichever works best for you.
- Remove your phone case: Yes, a phone case protects a cell phone from damage but not from water. In fact, it can trap water between the charging port and your phone case, further damaging your device. Also, your speakers, SIM card slot, Micro SD slot and Headphone jack are at risk.
- Wipe the phone with a dry towel: The first thing you need to do is dry your phone with a dry towel. Just quickly grab a towel and clean your phone. Make sure no water is left on its surface or anywhere around.
- Switch off your phone: The next thing you must do is switch off your device. Those wondering why should know that your phone may face electrical damage if you don’t do it immediately.
- Disassemble your phone: The next thing you should do is disassemble your phone; no, we don’t mean to wreck your phone. Here dissembling means retrieving the SIM card, micro SD card and phone’s battery. While the cards may be waterproof, they can transfer the surrounding moisture to the inside of the phone.
Note: Take out the phone’s battery if possible. Those who can’t may skip this step.
- Keep the phone in an upright position: Next, you have to keep your phone in an upright position. The phone’s charging port must face the ground so that extra water drips out itself.
Pro tip: While you put your phone in an upright position from one hand, use the other hand to firmly tap it with your palm to make the water drip down fast.
- Spray rubbing alcohol on the charging port: So many of you must be wondering, isn’t rubbing alcohol a liquid? Well, yes, it is, but it absorbs water and quickly dries off. If you are still not convinced, pour some onto your palm and see how quickly it evaporates. Now put some rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle and sprinkle it with light hands on the charging port. Repeat this a few times and you will eject water from the charging port.
- Put your phone in a sock: Placing it in a hygroscopic environment will help you get water out of it. Take a sock and put your phone in it. Now use a shop vacuum cleaner and set it on the exhaust side to blow air out of the hose. However, you can also use a hair dryer if you don’t have a vacuum cleaner. Ensure the dryer is set to cool throw, not warm, to ward off the risk of damage. After using the hair dryer, tape your sock with the phone in it and wait for at least 3 hours so that it gets dry. Once it is fully dried, you can take it out.
- Test your phone: Once you are done with all the steps, it’s time to check your phone to see if it’s functioning properly. For that, turn it on and check if it’s working fine. Next, plug in the charger to check if it’s charging or not. In case your phone doesn’t get charged, repeat the drying process.
So that’s how you get water out of the charging port. The good thing about this process is that it doesn’t require any fancy products or complex methods. Just a few simple, intelligent steps will save your phone.
What you should NOT do when water gets inside your charging port
The Internet is full of advice to treat your phone for water damage. However, very few to none ACTUALLY work for you. In fact, in most cases, they destroy your phone even further.
We know the urge to dry your phone quickly but please avoid doing any of the following things:
- Do not dry your phone with a hot hair dryer. Doing so might cause your phone’s internal circuit to malfunction.
- Do not place your phone in a silica gel pack, cat litter or rice.
- Do not put your wet phone on charging. Wait for it to dry before you do that.
- Do not insert napkins or QTips into the charging port.
- Do not rush to take out the SIM card from your phone until it is fully dried. Doing so while your phone is wet can cause water to go inside.
- The moment it gets wet, switch off your phone immediately after drying. Do not use a wet smartphone.
- Do not shake your device unnecessarily, as it could make the water get inside the circuit.
- Never attempt to dissemble the phone immediately when it’s wet.
Those were some strict no-nos to get water out of your phone. If you want to know if silica gel packs, rice and cat litter help get your phone dry, check out this little experiment we performed.
| Drying Method | Time it takes to dry |
| Silica gel packets | 11 days |
| Rice | 10 days |
| Let it dry on its own | 8.5 days |
| Cat litter | 7 days |
| Fan | 2 days |
| Air | 3 hours |
So these were other drying methods typically suggested on the internet. The downside of the first five is that they take too much time to dry your phone. If you leave your phone in a wet condition for this long, there are high chances that your phone will be damaged before drying. In fact, if your phone gets just slightly wet, you can continue using it as it will dry itself. You don’t require any of the above methods in that case.
Phone Drying Myths – Do they really work?
Are you like us, who instantly Google when something goes wrong? If so, you may come across ridiculous hacks on the internet to eject water out of your phone. Here are some common misconceptions that claim to dry your phone.
Sun Exposure
As much effect as it sounds, drying your phone in the sunlight could be the worse decision you have ever made for your phone. While a brief exposure won’t harm, prolonged exposure to heat can transfer heat from hardware to internal Components and could eventually damage your phone’s miniature circuit board. Moreover, your phone’s display may also crack due to the extreme temperature.
Dry Rice
Placing a wet phone in a box full of dry rice is an old method to eject water out of the phone. However, it is not as effective. Grains have tiny dirt particles that can get inside your phone’s charging port and mess with its internal components of it. Therefore, you should avoid using this hack.
Cotton Swabs
It’s hard to accept that cotton swabs are not good for cleaning your charging port. While it works well in most other cases, it can push tiny dust particles into the phone through the charging port, causing damage to it.
Paper Towel:
Some online sources also recommend using a paper towel to wipe water from the charging port, which is absurd. When you use a paper towel on the charging port, it also gets wet due to the water in the charging port. As a result, the wet towel gets stuck inside the phone and becomes hard to take out. So clearly, it’s not the best option to go for.
Letting it dry on its own
As we said previously, letting your phone sit to dry on its own takes 8 to 9 days, leading to corrosion. It gradually damages your phone and its internal components before you know that the damage has been done. Also, leaving your phone wet for a prolonged time is not safe for the phone. It can lead to other internal problems as well.
Swinging the phone to take out water
We have seen people shaking and swinging their phones unnecessarily to take water out of them. No, guys, you don’t do that. It further pushes the water inside the phone to other undamaged parts.
Toothpick
Never use sharp objects for your phone unless it’s a flagship phone and you use it to take out the SIM card tray. Using a toothpick on the charging port can damage it badly.
How to fix false liquid detection alerts on your phone?
If you are sure that your phone is fully dry, but you are still receiving liquid detection alerts on your phone, here’s how you can fix that:
Turn off moisture notifications
You can simply disable your moisture detection notifications from the Settings menu by
- Unlock your device
- Head to the Settings menu
- Tap ‘Battery Usage’
- Next tap, ‘Recent Battery Usage’
- Choose ‘Android System’ and tap ‘Force Stop’
Hard Reset:
Hard reset is a method to shut down your device and turn it on back to restart the phone’s hardware. It’s very simple, just switch off your phone as you do, wait for 1 or 2 minutes and then switch it on again.
Update Your Phone
Sometimes, you encounter minor issues with your phone because your software is not updated. Go to the Settings menu and check for software updates. If there are any, put your phone on update and install the new software. Hopefully, you won’t see those false alerts again.
Change the charging cable
When your charging cable is wet, you probably will get false moisture detection alerts. So just change your charging cable and you won’t see those alerts again.
Switch on your cell phone on Safe Mode:
If you still get moisture alerts even after a power reset, then try to do that again on Safe Mode. Here’s how to do that
On iPhone
- Hard press the power button on the right side of your phone to shut down your device
- Turn it on. When it starts to light up. Hard press the volume down button till the Apple logo appears.
- When your device is booted, it automatically goes in Safe mode.
On Android
- Power off your phone and keep it off for a bit
- Press and hold the power button again for 3 seconds.
- A prompt will appear asking you to confirm rebooting of your device in Safe Mode
- Press ‘Confirm’
Full Factory Reset
If none of the above-stated solutions works, go for a full factory reset. Keep in mind that factory resetting will erase your phone so it’s better to keep a backup of your data before going for a full factory reset. Here’s how to factory reset
On iPhone
- Head to the Settings app
- Tap General and select Transfer or reset iPhone
- Press Erase All Content and Settings
- Tap ‘confirm’
On Android
- Open Settings
- Tap Backup and Reset
- Select Factory Data Reset
- Choose Reset Device
- Tap Erase Everything
- Confirm the changes
Wrap Up
So that was our tried and tested solution to get water out of the charging port. If none of the solutions works for you, it’s best to call for help. Take your phone to the nearest repair shops and get it checked because a dead phone after a water incident isn’t a good sign.
