Back in the day, before I decided enough was enough, I went through around 15 phones in four years.

Lost, stolen, broken, dropped, thrown in the pool with them in my pocket – I soon resorted to buying cheapies for R150 and accepting my fate.

Of course when it was the latter I did what everyone says to do – I placed the phone in rice, prayed to the phone gods and hoped for the best.

Turns out I may have been doing it all wrong, because according to one company there is a more effective method.

This from Metro:

Putting your phone in rice (especially if you put the phone and the rice in a ziplock bag and seal it up) will work, but there’s another method that could work even better: cat litter.

Yup. Phone company Gazelle ran some tests and found that using cat litter is actually more effective at reviving your phone than rice.

They recommend trying to shake all of the water out of the phone first then air-dry, before putting it in a bag of crystal kitty litter for as long as possible.

And they mean as long as possible. Apparently it can take days for the trick to work.

If your phone isn’t working after 48 hours of sitting pretty in kitty litter, it might be a lost cause. Call the insurance company.

Nah mate, you never give up after 48 hours – play the ‘quitters never win’ card and ride it out.

One more word of advice before I go: don’t ever place it in the oven on low heat, especially when you’ve just started a new job and it’s a work phone.

You know who you are.

[source:metro]