A YouTube video really can remove water from your iPhone

A YouTube video claiming it can remove water from your iPhone might seem up there with emails from Nigerian princes and videos of Elon Musk promoting some new cryptocurrency, but tests reveal that it does actually work … somewhat.

A tech writer who was understandably skeptical about the comments on the video decided to call in iFixit to put the claim to the test …

The two-minute video, entitled Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker (GUARANTEED), has notched up some 45 million views over a four-year period.

It has also racked up more than 140,000 comments, many of which claim they tried it and it worked.

The Verge’s David Pierce tried it and it appeared to work, but wondered whether that was just coincidence.

I encountered it for the first time earlier this year after my nephew’s phone slipped out of his pocket and into a river near our Airbnb in a tiny town in Virginia. We semi-miraculously found his phone, then brought it inside and started trying to dry it off. A moment later, one of his friends just casually suggested playing “one of those videos that gets the water out.” We put on “Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker ( GUARANTEED ),” and ultimately, the phone was fine.

Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out whether these videos really work. Are all these lucky shower scrollers just the beneficiaries of phones that have become far more waterproof and rugged in recent years? Or should we stop recommending rice and start recommending this video?

Apple didn’t want to offer an opinion, though the Apple Watch water-ejection system works in exactly the same way. Audio company Bose said that the theory was, ah, sound enough.

All a speaker is really doing is pushing air around, and if you can get it to push enough air, with enough force, you might be able to push droplets of liquid out from where they came. “The lowest tone that that speaker can reproduce, at the loudest level that it can play,” says Eric Freeman, a senior director of research at Bose. “That will create the most air motion, which will push on the water that’s trapped inside the phone.”

Generally, the bigger the speaker, the louder and lower it can go. Phone speakers tend to be tiny. “So those YouTube videos,” Freeman says, “it’s not, like, really deep bass. But it’s in the low range of where a phone is able to make sound.” 

iFixit put the video to the test with four phones, including an iPhone 13, and it worked – somewhat.

It works! A little. As he played the video on each phone, Ritter also took close-up video of the speaker on each phone, and in every case, the phone immediately blasted out a flurry of droplets. The effect didn’t last long, but it was clearly ejecting water that wasn’t coming out otherwise. 

However, the benefit was, as you’d expect, limited to the speakers. If you have water in the USB port, SIM slot, or beneath the buttons, the video won’t help.

Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash