Don’t dry your iPhone in rice – do this instead, says Apple

Apple has certified its phones as water resistant since 2017, the year it removed the headphone port from its phones.

The latest iPhones can survive for up to 30 minutes in up to six metres of water, according to the company, as well as surviving spills from drinks including coffee and wine.

Water damage typically comes through the phone’s charging port, although iPhones now prevent charging cables from working if they detect liquids in the area.

Any attempt to charge a wet phone will trigger an alert warning owners to wait for the device to dry out.

People’s attachment to their phones at all hours has led to growing numbers of phones being accidentally submerged in water. 

The insurer Direct Line found four years ago that half of Britons take their phones to the toilet. It said that 40pc had dropped an item down the toilet or sink and 1.8 million had dropped their phone down the toilet in the last year alone.

In 2020, the Italian competition regulator fined Apple €10m (£8.6m) for what it said were misleading claims about how water resistant the latest iPhones are.

It said the company’s claims that its iPhones were water resistant for 30 minutes only stood up under laboratory conditions involving pure water, and not in the real world.