When it comes to smartphones, there are few things more horrifying than dropping a handset into a glass of water, a sink or, heaven forbid, a toilet. The instant the device is submerged, panic strikes and the race to recover it is underway. Unless your smartphone is water-resistant like Sony’s Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z2 or Samsung’s new Galaxy S5, the odds are pretty good that even a quick dunk can do damage from which your phone will not recover. But what if there was a simple way to save it?
Reviveaphone is an unorthodox drying system for electronics that is mainly targeted at smartphones.
While most people offer advice such as putting a wet phone in a bag of rice so that all the water is drawn out, Reviveaphone’s solution is the polar opposite — it calls for users to completely submerge an iPhone, Android phone or other smartphone in a bag of liquid for seven minutes.
Then the phone is left to dry for 24 hours, after which Reviveaphone says it will be saved and will work just fine.
The company says that water isn’t actually what damages submerged gadgets, it’s the minerals and impurities in the water that act as conductors and cause shorts. Reviveaphone’s proprietary liquid solution is designed to remove those impurities from inside the phone so that they can’t damage the internal electronics.
The company claims that its solution has a 90% success rate.
A 90% success rate would indeed be phenomenal, though ZDNet contributor Mary Branscombe recently gave the solution a try and was not able to save an HTC Desire after she intentionally dropped it in the sink for just a few moments.
Other tests have found that Reviveaphone’s solution works well, however, and the company offers customers their money back if its liquid solution doesn’t save their phones.
Reviveaphone costs £14.99 per kit, or about $25.
