You’re a klutz. Admit it. I bet you have soaked at least one gadget in your life, either a cellphone in the toilet, a glass of wine on an Amiga keyboard or even, if you are really not paying attention, an iPod Nano in the washing machine (full disclosure: I have done all of the above).
If you lived in Japan, you big butter-fingers, you could just drop the poor, bedraggled device into the Dryer Box, a gadget-saving cube currently finding its way into various Yodobashi Camera stores in Tokyo. After a half hour inside, even a fully soaked cellphone will be dry again.
Whether it works or not is a different matter: if water already shorted out the electronics, you’re out of luck. If you ripped the battery out fast enough, then you may fare better. If your phone or iPod or whatever is resurrected, there will be a ¥1,000, or $12 charge. Should it not rise from the dead, the session is free.
The specs are somewhat impenetrable, but it appears that the box is simply a big hair-dryer, blasting the drowned gadget with hot air to dry it out. The best alternative, should you not happen to be in Tokyo when you dunk your cellphone, is a long spell in a warm, dry place: I used a sunny window-ledge for my Nano.
Those who suggest putting it in a bag of rice are dead wrong. If rice could pull moisture out of the air in your phone, it would do the same for the air around it, and all the rice in the world would be a soggy mess. It isn’t, so don’t bother.
Dryer Box [JMC via Gizmag and Core77]
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