Can playing a YouTube video save a soaked smartphone? A viral video with over 45 million views so far called “Sound To Remove Water From Phone Speaker (GUARANTEED)” promises just that.

But does it work? That’s what David Pierce from The edgewanted to find out in collaboration with the repair company iFixit.

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They conducted a fascinating test where smartphones were submerged in water with UV dye for one minute. The video was played on the phone and the next day the phone was taken apart to see if any liquid had entered the device rather than being thrown out by the video being played.

The idea behind it is that the video mimics the feature built into the Apple Watch that ejects water from the speaker when submerged.

Does it work?

According to Pierce, “It works! A little bit.” There is a slow-motion video where you can see the sound causing small bursts of water to come out of the speaker, but they quickly fade away and obviously don’t remove all of the water.

The other problem is that the phones are complex and have numerous cavities, nooks and crannies where liquid can get in. For example, this video might be 100% effective at removing liquid from the speakers, but there still remain other entry points like the charging port, SIM tray, and any imperfections in the seal that might have arisen due to age or wear.

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As for the effectiveness of the video in removing liquid from the speakers, Chayton Ritter, a mechanical engineering student who works on the iFixit editorial team and conducted these tests, said, “I say (the videos) work somewhat. It can’t hurt, but I don’t think it’s the ultimate solution or a way to suck out all the liquid.”

This is probably the reason why companies like Apple do not offer this type of feature on their smartphones.

My opinion is that someone made a video with the intention of making it go viral, and the video went viral, and the tens of millions of views gave it authority, which drove the views up even further.

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The video is hosted on the YouTube channel n Beats, which currently has over 1,000 videos and has reached nearly half a billion views. The channel also features other hit videos such as “Sound That Makes Dog Tilt Head Left & Right (GUARANTEED)”, “5 Sounds Dogs Hate All Time” and “10 Sounds Dogs Love To Hear The Most”, all of which have tens of millions of views.

Several other videos on the site claim to be able to remove water from your phone, charging port, or speaker.

Personally, I wouldn’t bother. These videos remind me of the ones that claimed to remove burnt screens or get rid of stuck pixels on your display. They gave people hope – mostly false hope – and in the case of some of the burnt screen videos, they actually caused wear and damage to the display.

Do this instead

Next time my iPhone gets wet, I won’t play this video, I’ll just shake the handset and move on with my life.

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But if I had the choice between playing this video or dipping my iPhone in rice, I’d play this video every time. While I’m not convinced the video does much more than shake the iPhone, I don’t think it will damage my phone, unlike other popular “solutions” like rice, which can clog the charging port and cause the buttons to get stuck.

Seriously – if your phone gets wet, don’t use rice. Or loose silica gel beads. Or cat litter – especially used cat litter. These things don’t work and can make things a lot worse.

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Most modern smartphones are now waterproof and just need to be shaken and wiped down. If your smartphone is not waterproof or you find the water resistance questionable, I advise you to turn it off, wipe it down and put it in a Ziploc bags filled with Silica gel packets or a One or two DampRid packsand leave it in a warm – not hot! – place for a few hours or overnight.

Or you can try to be better than me and take care of your things!