Everything is all fine and dandy until you go and drop your phone into a bowl of water, the toilet, the pool or your cup of coffee at that nice cafe next to the art gallery. Then it’s all aargh and yikes and help and stuff.
Well one option that might fix things is the new Dry Box phone rescue service which is in quiet test rollout mode in the US. The inventor, David Marchiori says it’s silly to put your soggy handset into a bowl of rice to try and dry it out – “the phone’s wet, it’s not hungry” – which kind of makes sense.
His invention is an oven like box into which you place the wet phone, making sure you’ve removed the battery as soon as possible after the accident. The magic box works by heating the phone to a precise temperature while sucking away the moisture from the electronics. It takes about half an hour to run through the drying out phase, after which the handset will either work as new, or it will be confirmed as too dead to resuscitate.
Dry Box Rescue is currently rolling out across Texas in the USA, so you’ll need to be close enough to one of the malls where the service is located to make use of the little machine. But no doubt if the demand grows or we grow more clumsy, then we should start seeing these booths in many more places. For a full demo of the system, watch the video below. The restoration currently costs $40 a phone, with a money back guarantee.
Or buy a Z!
Heh, yes. And remember to keep all those little hatches closed AT ALL TIMES, just in case. :)
The problem is that it needs to be used immediately to work. Your phone would be dead by the time you drove to the mall to use this. Most people wouldn’t buy one to keep on hand at home unless they dunk their phones a lot.
Yes good point. You also need to be within a decent distance of a stall to take advantage of this in time. Hmm…interesting.