Can you imagine a day without your smartphone? It has become an integral part of our lives. Modern mobile phones aren’t limited to just making phone calls or sending text messages. You can do a lot more things with your smartphone. For instance, you can take beautiful snaps, record 4K videos, browse the internet, watch online content, listen to music, use it as a navigation devise to name a few. We take utmost care of smartphone. But accidents happen. You will drop the phone. Or you will spill some liquid on the phone. What if you drop the phone in water or spill water on your phone? Water can creep into several openings and one such opening is the speaker hole. How to Get Water Out of Your Phone Speaker?
If you find yourself in a similar situation, then don’t worry. We are here to help you. In this guide, we will see what to do if you accidently dropped your phone in a pool or water. After that, we will also see how to get water out of your phone speaker.
IP Ratings of Modern Smartphones
Most modern smartphones (at least the flagship models) have some sort of IP Rating. This rating indicates the level of dust and water protection your smartphone offers.
All iPhones starting with iPhone 7 have either IP67 (iPhone 7 through iPhone XR) or IP68 (iPhone XS through iPhone 14) rating. Smartphones from other manufacturers also have similar ratings.
This means, any splash of water in your smartphone doesn’t do any damage. An important point to remember here is that iPhones (and other flagship phones) are water resistant and not water proof (there is a difference).
Did You Drop Your Phone in Water? Here’s What You Need to Do
When you take your phone to the pool side or the beach, there is a good chance for you to drop your phone into the water, if you are not careful.
Either at home or at the beach, if you accidentally dropped your phone in water, then here’s what you need to do.
Disconnect any cables from your phone, if any. Clean all the visible water with hand or a good quality microfiber cloth.
To get water out of the charging ports, gently tap the phone against your hand with the charging port facing downwards.
Do this for the speaker port as well. Do not open the SIM tray until the exterior of the phone is dry.
Allow the phone to dry completely, for at least 5 to 6 hours before connecting the charging cable or any other accessories.
Things to avoid when phone speaker gets wet
- Avoid connecting a charger to prevent potential short circuits.
- Refrain from using a blow dryer or blowing air on the device before opening it.
- Resist the urge to plug in the charger.
- Avoid pressing any keys or volume buttons, as this can force water behind the rubber seals, causing additional damage.
- Blowing into the phone can reintroduce water. It’s advisable to refrain from this and keep the phone inactive until you can take it to a repair shop.
- Stay calm and avoid hastily using a dryer or any other methods on your phone.
How to Get Water Out of Your Phone Speaker?
Even if you follow all the step that we mentioned in the previous section, you might not remove all the water in speaker. If you continue to use your phone with water still inside the speaker opening, then you will not only damage the speaker but even the internals of the phone itself.
So how to get water out of your phone speaker?
1. Get Rid of Visible Water
Switch off the phone as soon as you take it out of the water. Clean all the water from the surface, charging ports, etc. Do not use objects with lint. Use microfiber cloth to clean the water.
Tap the phone against your hand to push water out of the charging port and speaker. Make sure that these opening are facing down when you are doing this.
Once the outside of the phone is dry, take out the SIM tray and remove the SIM Card (if any).
2. Suck the water
Not manually. But using a vacuum cleaner. If you have a car vacuum cleaner, then use it as it has relatively low suction. If you have a regular vacuum cleaner, operate it in its lowest speed.
Be very careful when using vacuum cleaner. We do not recommend using any blower or hair dryer as they blow air instead of sucking air. This action could push the water deeper into the speaker.
3. Play Low Frequency Sound
Apple Watch has an excellent feature that can help you expel water out of its speakers. iPhones and other smartphones don’t have a similar feature, but we can try one ourselves.
Open Online Tone Generator website on your iPhone. Select Sine Wave and play different low frequencies from 20 Hz to 200 Hz.
How does this work? With low frequency, you can actually see the speaker diaphragm oscillate (at that frequency). This to and fro action of the diaphragm can push air and this in turn pushes near by water.
4. Use an App
There are special app designed specifically to get water out of speakers. For iPhone users, we recommend “Water Eject” “Sonic”, “FixMySpeakers”, or any other similar apps or shortcuts. It works by making a special sound that creates waves, pushing the water out.
While using any of these tone-related apps, make sure that the volume of your phone is maximum.
5. Silica Gel or Rice
Placing your phone in a rice filled container can suck all the moisture. This works most of the time but it is a time taking process.
As an alternative, you can use Silica Gel packets. They also do a similar job of sucking oxygen and moisture from a closed space. So, put you phone in a plastic container with lid.
Place a Silica Gel packet (or a few packets) in the container. Close the container using its lid. Wat for a couple of hours. We recommend at least 5 or 6 hours.
6. Contact Service
If there is damage to your phone’s speakers (muffled sound, crackling noise, etc.) even after doing all the above-mentioned methods, then we recommend you can contact your smartphone’s service center.
Conclusion
We love our smartphones. We take it everywhere we go. School, work, pool, beach, even bathroom. When you use your expensive smartphone near a body of water and drop it, water creeps into all the openings.
Even if you could get rid of the water from the surface and charging port, getting water out of the speaker is a bit challenging.
In this guide, we saw the basic steps you need to follow when you accidently spill liquid on your smartphone or if you drop your phone in water.
After that, we saw different steps on how to get water out of your phone speaker.
