Why is this rice story still around?
Unless the rice has been baked dry around 100c and left to cool in a sealed container it is not hygroscopic in any meaningful way. Baked dry or from sealed package silicone gel is effective, if it has been out in the air it is also pretty useless. A fan or oven set at 50C would work better
Hair dryer risks melting a case, and air hose risks blowing off SM components.
Best case for those in the future is to pull the battery immediately, disassemble the N900(or other phone) and use high concentration alcohol >90% or in a pinch deionized or distilled water as quickly as possible. Air dry. Not sure what it will do to the camera but it might save the system board, I have done this for several phones, radios, and laptops in the last 30 years with pretty good success.

I may share my story about my 2009 N900 that got into a washing machine in December 2015.

I had it on my pants pocket and without me knowing my mother in law took the pants and put them into washing machine. It took about 10 minutes before I realized that my pants were put in there, with the phone.

Next we stopped the washer but it did not let open the door before the water had drained... the machine did not have drain only option but we did change the program to final spin to get it finished. The N900 took another 5 minutes of high G abuse.. I was sure that there is no way it could survive.

After I got the phone out it was quite hot. I took the battery out as soon as I could. Clearly the battery was discharging to somewhere at fast rate. The battery was also slightly bulged...

When I took out the battery cover, the phone internals were absolutely 100% clean and dust free! It looked like brand new phone. The washer definitely did its job.

There was some foggy moisture visible underneath the screen as well as under the camera lens. There was no liquid water. (The spin was apparently effective... ))

I put it into a bucket of rice for overnight. Next morning I tried to charge it. It took several minutes before the yellow blinking charge light turned on. This was encouraging.

When I tried to power up it just vibrated and immediately shut down. It entered to reboot loop that I had to stop by pulling the battery.

I left it alone couple more days and tried again. That time it actually booted up! It seemed to work few minutes but then the screen started flickering and went blank due to backlight stopped working. I powered it off again and left it alone.

Finally maybe ~2 weeks after the incident I tried it again and it did come up normally. I started verifying functions and made backup of the files (mostly pictures taken). Everything seemed to work except the camera. (It says it is in use by another application.) Also if left in standby it drains battery quite fast. I think the camera module is broken and causes the battery drain.

Later on I did open the phone to see the internal damage. I found few spots of corrosion near connectors that I cleaned up. This did not help to fix the camera.

As summary I'm impressed how the N900 did survive that... I was certain that there is no hope to get anything out of it...

What I'm saying not all hope is lost just yet. Let it dry for days... if not weeks before giving up.

Now ...
Big questions here....
Would jasmine rice be more preferable in this kind of situation ...
to at least impart some fragrance?
And would "cooked" be better than say .... al dente ...?

Err, because it works?

A few grains of rice in the salt cellar to stop the salt getting soggy works too you know.

It is true that rice, being hygroscopic, soaks in moisture from the surrounding air. This starts taking place long before you put a wet phone in it. Which is why it is imperative to keep your rice in a closed container. It does not need to be hermetic, even the plastic bag it came in from the shop is good enough. But it is never fully saturated even after months, as evidenced by how much more water it can take in when cooked.