I’ve heard about all sorts of disasters with smartphones, and other small, portable electronic devices. Being small and portable makes them easy to drop — something I’ve personally witnessed. Phones are tough by design, but they really don’t like water. Drop one in a toilet while you’re relaxing, and it’s gone — for all practical purposes.
So I had my phone outside with me one evening while I was safety diver for my granddaughter who was practicing scuba skills in our pool. She was enthusiastic and stayed in the pool until it became completely dark outside.
Well, out of sight, out of mind. I helped her out of her dive gear, and then went inside. The phone stayed outside in the dark, quite forlorn and forgotten.
Next morning I noticed it had rained in the early morning hours. Great, I thought, the lawn needs water. But when I went outside I discovered my phone sitting face up on a glass table with beads of water everywhere, including on the phone. A few expletives followed, as you might imagine.
My phone had been somewhat protected by an almost all enclosing Otter box, so I was hopeful not all was lost. Indeed, when I brought the phone in, removed the Otter box sheaving and dried off the phone with paper towels, the phone came back on. Immediate disaster avoided. Thank-you Mr. Otter.
But it took a little while before the potential damage became apparent. When my phone would ring, I’d hear nothing on the ear speaker. I had to switch to speaker phone mode to hear anything. Well, that was annoying.
And then I tried to take a phone photo of the scuba gear, and I could barely see through the camera view finder for the obscuring droplets of water. Rats! Clearly, water had gotten inside the phone. It was merely a matter of time before more damage was done.
With nothing to lose, I plundered through my medicine cabinet and found a potential solution, pictured below. 
In fact, I found four of them. I placed those small cylinders of silica gel in a quart-size zip-lock style bag, and placed the dampish phone inside and sealed the bag after squeezing out excess air. If the silica gel canisters didn’t hurt the medicine, it probably wouldn’t hurt my ailing phone.
And there the phone sat, with the small vials of desiccant.
I don’t pray for the healing of phones, but I did have some thoughts somewhat resembling prayer.
I let the phone-in-a bag sit overnight, and in the morning I found I could hear the voices on the other end of the phone connection, and my camera lens no longer had droplets of water on it. As you can see from these photos, the camera worked just fine, and all functions have worked fine ever sense.
Even Siri didn’t seem to mind getting rained on.
