I knocked a mug of tea over my iphone last night, still trying to dry it out. Are such accidents generally covered by household insurance? I am with AXA

I asked AXA when I was getting my policy and they said no.

Put it in a bowl with some rice as well.

Haha. My wife washed her phone in the washing machine (phone was in trouser pocket) - took the battery out, stuck it in the oven and hey presto, good as new...

PS: this was not an iphone but a cheap Nokia

PPS: regarding the question - no, I doubt it. Could you imagine the mayhem in claims

I don't know about insurance.

However if it isn't I would leave it for a whole week before turning it on, if that is what you decide to do. Leave it somewhere warm. Ideally opening it up to let air circulate inside.

I dropped a Nokia in a shallow part of the Rhine, and remember seeing the display lit up on the bottom. I waded in and turned it off quickly. It lasted another year before it was pinched.

Leaving it to dry for only a couple of days probably won't cut it.

One thing that worked for me (sounds silly) but put your iPhone in a bag full of rice for about 24hr. The rice will wick all of the moisture from the phone, hopefully allowing it to be used again.

Throw your iPhone in the garbage and do yourself a favour and buy an Android HTC.

Far better in every aspect (except the camera and media player).

does work, my brother dropped his ipod into the washing bowl and I told him to do that, worked a treat.

whatever you do don't turn it before its fully dried out

Maybe you can get someone (friend) claiming he did it by accident (with a good story ready) and then his insurance will pay for it.
Then you need to give the favour back!

Or maybe we could not commit insurance fraud and take responsibility for our actions?

If you'd have bought an HTC you'd never have spilled coffee on it.

Put your phone under a desk light on top of a thick towel for a few days. Don't let it get too hot. 48 hours should do.

try throwing it really hard against a dry slab of concrete (pavement might work). if you get the angle right, the concrete should stop the phone dead, but the momentum will take the water out of the phone.

I can vouch that the rice trick works.

My iphone went swimming and I turned it off immediately, put it in a sealed tub of rice, put it in a warm spot and left it for a week.

It worked perfectly afterwards. It was only when I dropped it down a flight of concrete stairs that it ceased working permanently

On the plus side, I now have a shiny white iphone 4

My 3G spent 30 seconds in the washing machine, turned itself on in the machine. As soon as I got it out, the screen fuzzed and that was it. So I thought.

I put it, as advised above, into a bowl of rice for a week, covered in a piece of muslin first to stop rice dust getting inside. No luck.

Then I gave it away. 2 months later it was working again, except the home button is a bit iffy. Of course, by that time I had bought myself a new one.

And, no, the insurance company didn't insure against stupidity, unfortunately

To aid with the drying process....I have many times with electricals, remotes, phones etc...opened them and cleaned with methanol/ethanol..It will displace the water and evaporate in seconds...Just evaporating the water off can leave a sticky residue and take a while.

Note: Test plastic first as it may melt...(If the plastic is ok then a good liberal splashing has been fine for me)

(probably not that helpfull if you cannot get your hands on MeOH)

I agree with you Robbster, a good idea. Remove the battery (known here as Akku) first!

Methanol/Ethanol mixture is known as methyl alcohol / ethyl alcohol and is known as Brennspiritus in German. (In Dialekt it is "Brennprit" which Migros / Coop sell in the cleaning section, in a 1 liter green plastic bottle. Alcohol does not usually dissolve plastics.

Be careful of using the BBQ lighter fluid, it probably contains impurities, maybe oils.

It would be best to finally clean with 99% Ethanol from the Apotheke / Drogerie.

Can't remove the battery on the iphone without removing a lot of screws first.

WD-40.

It was designed for this sort of job, mind you iphones are made from cob-webs and magic, and aren't very damage resistant I've seen more smahed iphones than had hot dinners.

WD-40 is a water displacement product, but don't put it on your Iphone.

Of no use to the OP but kind of related:

A watchmaker friend had a customer call up in a panic as they had gotten their watch wet. He told her to put it in a glass of water and keep it there until she could bring it in (keeping a wet watch submerged keeps the rust at bay, though he didn't bore her with the why-for).

The next day she showed up carefully carrying a large glass of water with 5 watches in it. She decided to get the other 4 serviced at the same time, and was glad to have learned the right way to bring a watch in .

As far as I know, Brennsprit is about 96% ethanol. Most of the rest is water plus some bitter agent (to make it unpalatable) and traces of other substances, a tiny bit of it possibly being methanol (methyl alcohol). That cannot be called a "Methanol/Ethanol mixture." Actually Brennsprit is one of the purest versions of ethyl alcoholol you can get on the open market.

And, by the way, Brennsprit is not just a dialect term. It is used also in documents of the Federal Alcohol Adminstration, so it is part of Swiss Standard German.

[GEEK]Alcohol is very good at drying electronics. It is hygroscopic and has a very loving relationship with water; even distilling will only get you to roughly 80% pure for isopropyl or 90% for ethanol as it forms an azetrope with water and can only be increased in purity by chemical drying or with molecular sieves. [/GEEK]

It's probably OK to soak an Ipod with it, if you want to try get some 99% pure isopropyl at the drug store. Iso is what's preferred in the circles I run in for water removal. They sell loads of it and won't give you the suspicious stare asking for pure ethanol might bring on.