Dropped your phone in water? The fix isn't rice

DENVER – Dropped your mobile phone in the toilet? Forget the urban myth about sticking it in rice.

But there is hope, in the form of a pair of competing companies that use a combination of vacuum and low heat to vaporize the water out of devices. The methods, these companies say, get water-impaired electronics up and running — with their data and settings intact.

TekDry and competitor DryBox offer a similar service: place your device inside the kiosk and wait for a few minutes as a vacuum pump depressurizes the container and low heat helps boil away the water vapor. It can dry out cell phones, laptops and other electronics in as little as 20 minutes, for about $20.

How does it work?

Water boils at lower temperatures if the pressure is also low – it's the reason brownie mixes require slight alterations at high altitudes.

"Electricity and water are not friends," said Craig Beinecke, co-founder of Colorado-based TekDry.

"When somebody sees it work, they're like wow, that's pretty cool," said David Naumann, managing partner of San Antonio, Texas-based DryBox. "It's all about lowering the boiling point of the moisture in order to extract it."

DryBox hit the market first in 2011, and has expanded to several Texas malls since then. The company has just signed a deal to put its kiosks into stores of a major grocery chain, Naumann said. A machine is also available in New York's Times Square.

TekDry is just getting started with a handful of machines in Colorado but it is also talking with major retailers. TekDry customers can also mail their devices to the company. Naumann said the company's research indicates about 100,000 phones get wet every day, depending on the season, soaked in everything from toilets and bathtubs to hot tubs and the ocean.

Both companies say acting fast and keeping electricity away from the phones until they are dry is key.

Turning it on or plugging it in is probably the worst thing you can do.

And rice? Well, they both say immersing soggy electronics in a bag of rice doesn't really work. You'd probably be just as well off setting your phone on the counter and leaving it alone for a few days, where air can circulate through it. Even then, there's no guarantee that will work.

TekDry and DryBox each offer a money-back guarantee if their technology fails to save your technology, and after of thousands of rescues between then, they claim a 70-80% success rate.

Beinecke said his most miraculous rescue was of an iPhone found under a lake after 26 hours, and then left to dry at the finders' home for five more days. TekDry has dunked dozens of phones dozens of times to develop the right balance of low pressure and low heat: "The day the iPhone 6 came out we bought one and dunked it," he said.

With the cost low and convenience high, Naumann and Beinecke said there's no reason not to try their machines, because they're offering far better odds than rice.

"You never know if all the moisture is all out. It's like playing Russian roulette," Naumann said. "Getting all of that data back is really what makes people happy, in addition to not having to spend hundreds of dollars to replace their phone."