Some things work better when moist. Cake. Towelettes, other… stuff. Smartphones are not one of those things. UAG, or Urban Armor Gear, has a new solution for damp tech for folks who don’t realise that bags of rice still exist.
It’s called the Phone Recovery Pouch. It promises to live up to its name by helping inadvertently soggy smartphones shed their excess moisture and, hopefully, resume normal operations. And the company’s only asking about R600 to do this for you.
UAG, does this really work?
Unlike a R40 bag of rice, the Phone Recovery Pouch is supposed to be infinitely reusable. Perhaps some folks are more prone to lobbing their phones into the toilet than others. Either way, the pouch uses the company’s Dryout tech to extract water from your phone. Hopefully, this will prevent another warranty claim from your side.
UAG’s accessory will supposedly do its work in about two to five hours if you’ve just splashed your precious phone with liquid. If it’s gone for a full dunk, three to twelve hours is the brand’s recommended time-out time. During this period, the pouch “actively pulls moisture from your device [and] traps it in its absorbent core.”
Once this is done and (hopefully) your phone has been resurrected, the pouch discards the trapped moisture. It’ll do this when exposed to sunlight, airflow (lots of it), or direct heat. If the latter option is chosen, it’s best if you select a heat source that won’t melt the rugged polyester exterior.
If this all seems a little too much to take in, UAG also has an explainer video. It takes four minutes to explain how to dry off a wet phone and stick it into a special baggie for a few hours. But the production values are decent, so there’s that.
Remarkably, the UAG Phone Recovery Pouch ships to South Africa. The full price (Customs and tax excluded) is R670 — assuming you don’t mind the company using the Hong Kong postal service. Which eventually becomes the South African postal service. Expedited shipping brings the price to R1,450 or so.
