Wet iPhone Help Needed

Some of my friends are avid hikers and wanted to go for a hike.  DH and I went with them to DuPont National Forest down by Brevard, NC.  It is a beautiful park with quite a few waterfalls.  To get to the good part of the water one must walk over several rocks.  I’m very clumsy so I found a rock with a good view and just stood there, but DH decided to be adventurous.  He took one wrong step and what he thought was a shallow crossing point quickly became a five foot deep section and he quickly found himself shoulder-deep in water backpack, iphone, camera, and all.

Since we had just started hiking and saving his iPhone wasn’t a priority for the rest of the group we continued hiking and it wasn’t until we got home that he really got it out in the air.  We didn’t have any rice in the house and we were so sore after hiking for 4 hours that we didn’t really want to go to the store.

I finally have the iPhone and his digital camera in bags of rice today.  I raided all my pill bottles to find some silica packets and tossed those in the bags of rice.  Any other tips that aren’t covered in other blogs?  cNET makes it sound like he’s SOL since we waited so long.

…the phone and camera were in his pockets.  His Targus backpack remarkably kept his change of clothes and fresh pair of socks dry even though it is a business backpack and not a hiking/camping one.