What should you do if you accidentally drop your mobile phone or your MP3 player in water? Maybe you jumped in the pool while the phone was still in your pocket but what can you do now to save that precious little thing?

The warranty of electronic gadgets may not cover damage due to water but before you decide to dump that wet phone, thinking that it is all game over, try some of the following options and it could start working again.

First turn off the wet phone and then open the back lid to remove the battery and, if present, the SIM card. Use a towel or cotton tissues to dry the external (visible) portions of the phone as much as possible.

Next, the most important part, we need a way to absorb the water that may have entered inside the phone body. One popular option here s that you put the phone in a bowl of uncooked rice and seal the bowl with a plastic sheet. Rice being a natural desiccant should absorb the moisture out of your phone over the next 2-3 days and if you are lucky enough, the phone should start ringing again.

There are however some other alternatives to rice that could be way more efficient.

Put the phone inside a zip-lock plastic bag with silica gel packets, leave for 2-3 days and the packets will absorb all the moisture from the phone’s interiors. Silica gel is a better desiccant than rice and can be easily obtained from your local hardware / craft stores.

Silica Gel, as you may have noticed in the above video, is also available in blue crystalline form and you may also use them instead of putting sachets in the plastic bag. The advantage with using blue crystals is that they turn light pink in color on absorbing moisture (so you get an hint) and if you heat the crystals, they turn blue again and can thus be reused.

There’s obviously no guarantee that your phone will work again after drying it with rice or silica gel but still, there’s no harm in trying once. ↓

Related: Protect Mobile Phones with a Condom