Daily Independent (Ashland, KY)

December 31, 2009

MARK MAYNARD: Solution for wet iPhone 12/31/09


I’ve had an iPhone since September.

When the cell phone extremes first came out, I wasn’t impressed. I just thought to myself: Why do I need all that stuff?

But after about four months of having one, I found out I do need all that stuff. It becomes a big part of your life, no matter how pathetic that may sound.

There have been a few times when I’ve left the iPhone plugged in at the house and headed to work. Usually, by lunchtime, I can hardly stand it anymore. So I rush back home. Most of the time, I return to the house before even arriving at work.

I’ve kept my ringtone as the cricket chirping. I’m sure you’ve heard it (you may have even heard mine, who knows?)

I was covering the Ashland Invitational Tournament’s opening round on Monday and the national anthem was being played. My cricket started chirping and Steve Dowdy’s son, Tate, who was serving as the ball boy, looked over at me and smiled a mischievous smile. He heard the chirping and couldn’t help but giggle a little.

After what happened to me last weekend, I’m glad I have a phone that chirps at all.

While doing some outside work, my phone rang and a co-worker was calling. I kept working, slipped the iPhone out of my pocket and held it under my chin to talk while continuing to work.

Not a good idea.

The iPhone slipped and dropped face first into a puddle of water.

Oh, boy, I thought.

I scooped it up as quickly as I could bend down (which isn’t as quick these days as it used to be).

As I picked it up, water was dripping from the sides but, amazingly, there was still power. So there was still hope.

I tried to return the call but got the “call failed” message. I checked the Internet and it was working. My address book was working. Even games were working.

But the one thing you have the phone for in the first place, the ability to call and talk to people, wasn’t working.

Great, I thought.

After going home, I googled “What if your iPhone gets wet” and found several sites.

There were countless cases of iPhones being dropped in the toilet; some of them actually worked again and some didn’t.

But water, it seemed, was the Kryptonite of iPhone.

I read one suggestion where they put the iPhone in a sandwich baggie with several of those small silicone pellets that sometimes come with clothes or shoes to keep out moisture.

But, who has a dozen of those on hand?

My resourceful wife then started looking through our pantry for rice. She filled the baggie with rice, covering the I-Phone, and then put it over a small lamp. We rotated it from side to side for about four or five hours.

Then, before going to bed, we tried the phone. Viola! It worked!

I’m going to post my solution on the Web site and call it Rice-A-Phonie.

Think it’ll stick?

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.