Vent: That 'one weird trick' for fixing phone batteries was a lie

A tech YouTuber told me to freeze my phone battery for 10 minutes to revive it. I tried it with my old Samsung Galaxy S9 last Tuesday and it just made the battery wet from condensation. The phone wouldn't turn on for two days after. Has anyone else fallen for a dumb gadget hack from a thumbnail?

4 comments

4 Comments

theajohnson8d ago

Oh man, condensation is the worst, let it dry out in rice next time.

alice9288d ago

Rice, really? Who still believes that works?

harperp248d ago

Rice really only works for getting moisture out of electronics, not phones (they're usually sealed too tight for that to help). Most of the time if you just wipe off the condensation and leave the phone alone for a bit, it clears up on its own. Honestly feels like people make way too big a deal about a little fog under the glass.

abby_cooper6d ago

Wait, are we really just gonna pretend that the "put it in rice" thing is some kind of miracle cure? Honestly, I feel like rice is just a total placebo at this point, and I say that as someone who used to swear by it. For condensation, which is literally just water vapor trapped under the glass, rice can't actually pull moisture out of a sealed phone. That whole trick is a myth that's been around forever, but it only works for something like a drop of water on the outside if you're lucky. The real fix is just leaving the phone in a warm, dry place with good airflow, like near a fan or in a bag with silica gel packets, which actually absorb moisture. So yeah, that freeze trick was dumb, but let's not pretend rice is any smarter for a sealed battery.