For the past four years, dozens of people have appeared in the YouTube comments section every day to express their love and appreciation for the content: a two-minute, six-second deep buzzing sound that sounds like a cell phone vibrating on a table, punctuating a somewhat hallucinatory animation of swirling stained glass.
Not a good video. But it wasn’t meant to be. The video is titled “The Sound of Water Removing from a Phone Speaker (I Guarantee).” There are many others like it. And the comments (what many call the “community”) are mostly people who have just gotten their phones wet in some way. “I walked in a river with my phone in my pocket,” one recent commenter said. “Yep, the steam from the shower is why I’m here,” another commented. “I was using my phone in the shower and this is a lifesaver.” They go on and on like this, and many of them are repeat offenders. “3rd time this month, I’m back again,” “I’m back again after 3 weeks,” “I pooped in the shower again!”
For more on the wet phone mystery (and the future of AR headsets), check out this episode of The Vergecast.
If you believe the comments, about half of this video’s 45 million views are from people who believe that if they take their phone into the shower or bathtub and play this video, everything will be fine. I first encountered this earlier this year when my nephew’s phone slipped out of his pocket in a river near our Airbnb in a small town in Virginia. We found his phone, miraculously, brought it into the house and started trying to dry it out. After a while, one of his friends casually suggested that we play “one of those water-draining videos.” We played “water-draining sounds (guaranteed) from the phone speaker,” and eventually the phone was fine.
Since then, I’ve been wondering whether these videos really work. Are these lucky shower-scrollers just benefiting from phones that have become far more waterproof and durable in recent years? Or should we stop recommending rice and start recommending “The Sound of Removing Water from Your Phone Speaker (Guaranteed)”?
The first thing I did was ask phone manufacturers for their opinions, and while no one from Apple, Google, or Samsung had any interesting answers beyond pointing to a generic “What to do if your phone gets wet” support page, several other people I spoke to made it clear that they thought the theory was perfectly reasonable.
Here’s the theory: All a speaker is really doing is pushing air out, and if it can push enough air out with enough force, it might push the water droplets out of their place. “That’s the lowest note a speaker can play, the loudest it can play,” says Eric Freeman, senior research director at Bose. “That’s what creates the most air movement, and it’s what pushes the water out of the phone that’s trapped inside.” Generally, the bigger the speaker, the more volume and bass it produces. Phone speakers tend to be smaller. “So the YouTube videos are not really deep bass, but the bass that the phone can produce,” Freeman says.
Perhaps the most practical example of how this works is the Apple Watch, which has a dedicated feature that ejects water after it gets wet. When I first contacted iFixit to ask about this water ejection mystery, the company’s repair engineer, Carsten Frauenheim, said that the Watch works on the same theory as the video. “It just pushes the water out of the speaker grill with a specific vibration sound,” he said. “Third-party versions are likely not ideally tuned, so we don’t know how effective it is on the phone, but we can test it.”
In fact, the company did run a test: iFixit’s lead teardown engineer Shahram Mokhtari and engineering student Chayton Ritter, who works at iFixit, soaked four smartphones in water. We chose an iPhone 13, a Pixel 7 Pro, a Pixel 3, and a Nokia 7.1, none of which were chosen on any scientific basis, but because they were devices we had on hand and were willing to destroy in the name of science. After soaking each phone in UV light for about a minute, Ritter took them out, tapped them to get the water out, played a video of a water jet, and left them there overnight. The next day, Ritter checked the areas where the UV dye residue was still there, indicating that the liquid had gotten in and not out.
Four mobile phones were dropped into this green mud for scientific research. Image: Chayton Ritter / iFixit
The results were mixed: the Pixel 7 Pro was basically bone-dry, the Nokia 7.1 was more or less ruined, and the iPhone 13 and Pixel 3 fell somewhere in between. But Mokhtari was careful to point out that these weren’t perfectly controlled tests; a phone’s seal could change over time or break without you noticing. He and Ritter both stressed that getting your phone wet is always risky, regardless of what a phone manufacturer advertises or what your previous experience has been. And the risk increases over time.
The inside of an iPhone 13 glows with liquid residue. (The green areas are where the liquid was.) Image: Chayton Ritter / iFixit
But as for the role of the YouTube video, the evidence was pretty clear: it worked! A little. Ritter also took close-up videos of each phone’s speaker as the video played on each phone. In every case, a huge amount of water immediately erupted from the phone. The effect didn’t last long, but it was clear that water was erupting in a way that normally wouldn’t happen.
But the video didn’t solve the problem entirely. While the phone’s speaker seems powerful enough to push air out from right next to the speaker, it didn’t solve the problem in other parts of the device, especially the other most common entry points, like under the buttons, the USB port, and the SIM card slot. And if the first squirt doesn’t get the liquid out, Ritter found that droplets just bounce back and forth as the speaker moves. So, he said, [the videos] That’s the way it goes. It may not do any harm, but I don’t think it’s a permanent solution or a way to get rid of all the fluid.”
The water spurt happens just after the buzzing starts, but then stops. Image: Chayton Ritter / iFixit
That may be why companies like Apple and Samsung offer waterproofing for their smartwatches but not for their smartphones. “Watches have fewer cavities and holes than phones, so the design can push water out of the cavities,” Mokhtari says. “With phones, the speakers are at the bottom and top of the phone, so they can’t reach cavities like the SIM card slot. It’s impossible to push water out of the cavities.”
The good news for those who scroll while showering is that phones are really getting more water-resistant. Three of the four phones Ritter tested worked fine, with the latest Pixel 7 Pro not getting any liquid left in it at all. The bad news is that there’s no guarantee that phones will stay water-resistant forever. And the really bad news is that if you take a shower with your phone on, you’re testing fate even more. “I don’t know what else is in your shampoo, but it’s probably highly conductive. It’s pretty rare that you get fresh water completely inside your iPhone,” Ritter says.
So, bookmark the water-draining video and keep it on hand for emergencies. Join the “Sounds of Removing Water from Phone Speakers (Guaranteed)” community, where everyone seems to be rooting for each other’s devices to survive. But don’t take them too seriously. Everyone I spoke to ended up giving me the same advice: don’t bring your phone into the shower.