Comment by tim333
17 hours ago
I was wondering about that. I lost my iPhone 13 mini the other day, did the find my phone beep thing and got a distant beep from my washing machine which was on wash cycle.
Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.
Don't fall for the 'glue cuz of protection' myth - there are and had been water-resistant phones way before Apple started glueing to avoid customers doing their own repairs and them losing out on new sales.
Which phones? I ask as someone that's had to replace multiple phones after a trip through the washing machine.
Modern phone water resistance is incredible. I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.
Fifteen years ago, I had a Garmin GPS (admittedly not a phone, but similar form factor) that survived a week of knocking around the bottom of a raft.
The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.
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Samsung still make the rugged Xcover range which has both replaceable batteries and waterproofing. And 3.5mm jacks too.
These devices are mostly sold in enterprise environments (eg field use, factories) and as such get a lot of wear and tear. But they hold up well. They're not ultra rugged but a good compromise. We use tons of them in our factories, we replaced DECT handheld phones with the Xcovers loaded with ms teams. Not an ideal setup (teams for mobile kinda sucks) but at least this way they can easily communicate with people in the offices.
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Samsung Galaxy S5 was the last one that attempted it. IP67 with a removable back cover and swappable battery.
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> I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.
Which is funny to me, because even with an IP68 phone, I get worried if I even splash a little water on it.
Back when replaceable batteries were the norm, I had two Blackberries that survived going through the washer and dryer.
I was wading through water with a 3310 in my pocket in 2006. Battery was fine and it worked after it was dried. There was a problem with the keyboard though but that was a cheap swap. And this was a phone without any water resistance.
Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first one to cross my mind.
Not really comparable perhaps - but I had a Ericsson t18s or similar that went through a full 60C cotton wash cycle (being on at the start of the wash) and was fine after drying off.
The thing is - if the battery had been destroyed, that could have been replaced...
I've seen rumors that Apple started waterproofing phones after Chinese criminal groups started farming parts on AppleCare by dumping the mainboard into buckets of Shenzhen seawater to deny electronic serial number readout. Your logic board can't be so dead from normal use that not even its PMIC respond to commands if it's waterproof.
I've also had iPhone dying from gasket leaks, the circumferential double sided tape seal dries out after a while.
Re the repairs, I can get the battery swapped on the 13 mini for £49 which isn't that bad. (iSmash, not Apple).
Also important to note that post is 1 datapoint. My "waterproof" phone fell in the bath for about 2 seconds and broke...
My brand new Pixel phone several years back, I was so excited it was IP68. Took some photos splashing around in water, not more than a foot or two. It died in minutes.
And they weren't bulky tactical phones that looked like the smartphone equivalent of Humvees?
Samsung xCover series phones are smaller than flagship phones with a case that many people add to achieve the same durability.
Putting the battery outside the water insulation zone might work for that, it's a sealed pouch anyway.
Conformal coating is a little more expensive than gasketing, but it works much, much better under pressure. Motorola does this.
Third parties offer new iphone batteries so it's clearly replaceable commercially