Apple’s Head of Hardware Engineering finally answers whether you should put your iPhone in rice if it gets wet

If you’ve ever dropped your iPhone in the bath, sink or, worst of all, the toilet, you’ve probably heard the same piece of advice: put it in a bowl of uncooked rice and hope for the best.

Now Apple’s VP of Hardware Engineering Tom Marieb has weighed in on the long-running iPhone durability myth, and his verdict is remarkably simple.

“Oh, the rice,” Marieb said when asked which iPhone durability myth he was tired of hearing.

An Apple boss’ verdict on the rice method

Marieb joined Apple in 2019 and now oversees gadget integrity within the company’s hardware engineering organization, including product testing, safety, and quality.

During a recent interview about iPhone durability with Pubity, he was asked specifically about the rice trick and didn’t exactly hold back.

“Oh, the rice,” he said.

“Stop putting it in rice. Don’t worry about it. It can get wet. It’s OK.”

Then came the line that is probably going to end up living rent-free in the minds of anyone who has ever panic-bought a bag of rice after dropping their phone in water.

“Eat your rice,” Marieb said. “Don’t use it for that.”

And Apple isn’t just dismissing the trick for the sake of it.

The company actually tells iPhone owners not to put a wet iPhone in a bag of rice because small particles can potentially damage the device.

The science says rice isn’t going to save your iPhone

The basic problem is that getting water out of a phone is much more complicated than simply putting the device next to something that can absorb moisture.

Modern iPhones are designed to resist water entering in the first place, but if liquid does get inside, it can reach connectors, circuit boards and other components.

Water can cause electrical problems and, over time, corrosion that damages electronic components.

Research on water damage in electronics has identified both immediate failures and long-term degradation resulting from exposure to liquids and moisture.

Rice also isn’t particularly good at pulling that moisture out.

A 2014 experiment by phone reseller Gazelle tested nine smartphones and compared different drying materials.

In a separate experiment, researchers placed identical water-filled sponges into containers with different household drying agents and measured how much water was lost over 24 hours.

Uncooked white rice performed worse than several other materials, including silica gel, and the researchers found that simply leaving the wet material exposed to open air actually performed better than sealing it in a container of rice.

That’s the important bit, because if water has made its way inside an iPhone, rice sitting around the outside isn’t magically going to suck it back out through the phone’s seals, ports and components.

There’s another problem, too. Rice can leave behind tiny particles that may find their way into charging ports and other openings, which is one reason Apple specifically warns against using it.

So if someone claims rice saved their phone, there’s a good chance the phone would have survived anyway.

So what should you actually do?

Apple’s advice is considerably less dramatic than burying your iPhone in a bowl of Uncle Ben’s.

If your iPhone gets water on it, disconnect any cables and gently tap it against your hand with the charging connector facing down to remove excess liquid.

Then leave it somewhere dry with some airflow and give it time to dry naturally, and Apple says it can take up to 24 hours for a wet connector to fully dry.

Apple also says not to use an external heat source or compressed air to dry the phone, and you shouldn’t stick anything into the charging port, so a hair dryer won’t work too.

It’s also worth remembering that even modern water-resistant iPhones aren’t completely waterproof and Apple says water resistance isn’t a permanent condition and can decrease with normal wear and tear.

So the next time your iPhone takes an unexpected swim, resist the urge to turn your kitchen cupboard into an emergency phone repair shop.

Tom Marieb has spoken: eat the rice.