Taking your smartphone on holiday this year? Better make sure it is sand and surf proofed!
We’ve spoken before about the imminent launch of the iPhone 7 and what it means to the phone market. As the successor to the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus it is rumoured to have lots of new bits and bobs. And one of its features may well be - according to a few tech websites - extra protection from dust and water.
This will be great news for iPhone lovers who also like to take their phones on holiday, in the bath, out in the rain or drop them in their pint from time to time. Finally we could see an end to phones in bowls of rice or drying out on the radiator! It might help to make our lives here at CoverCloud easier too.
Apple do it again. But, hang on, this won’t be the first smartphone to be given the water proofing treatment! Several other phones are available that already do this. There is even an entire market place devoted to rugged phones. These are the kinds of phones that can be used with gloves, that don’t mind a few drops of water and that will survive if you drop it in your prosecco.
There are some really interesting and very rugged phones on tuffphones.co.uk, a site that specialises in the tougher end of the market. Popular choices seem to be the Defender 2, an ultra tough, waterproof and dust proof beast of a phone.
At the less butch end of the market the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active is a phone that will stay with you when you “camp in the rain or trek through the desert” or do what everyday normal people do these days. It looks a little like the S5 but it sturdier and will take a drenching although ocean waves and waterfalls are not recommended. It is, as the manufacturers claim, water resistant As an added bonus it also has a built in heart rate monitor to make sure your heart doesn’t skip a beat when you use it…
What does water resistance mean?
If someone sells you a phone they claim is water proof or water resistant, what do they actually mean? Are we talking a light shower or a total drenching? The HTC Desire Eye, as an example, is water proof at a depth of 1 metre for up to an hour, so they say. That qualifies it for a jolly good dunking in the bath at the very least. But don’t soak for too long as it will eventually fail.
All smartphones are rated in this way because that’s how they are tested. They are placed in tanks at certain depths for certain number of hours (or minutes) to see how they fare under pressure. Of course this is always going to be a static test and doesn’t take into account the possibility of having your phone drenched and bashed when you are doing something like white water rafting.
But can you go diving with your smartphone?
Don’t get excited! Before you go off into the deep blue, remember that pressure under the surface of the water is greater than it is at the surface. At 10 metres the pressure is twice that of the surface, with the pressure a third again of atmospheric pressure at about six feet deep. This is why phones are rated for the depth – it might not be the water itself that will do for your phone, it’s the pressure on the seals that will kill it if you let it go too deep.
Yes, by all means take it in the water. But don’t take it any deeper than the recommended depth or for longer than recommended. And don’t forget that touch screens don’t work underwater! If you want to take that pre-lunch selfie of the shark coming at you, better get a phone with a dedicated shutter button like the HTC Desire or the Sony Experia Z3. At least you’ll get the shot!!!
Why you still need to protect your smartphone
Here at CoverCloud we think the idea of waterproofing, dust proofing and bomb proofing phones is great. Anything that makes phones less prone to damage and death by liquid is good by us. However, no phone is infallible. And no phone owner is infallible either. They do get lost and damaged and dunked and stolen, whether you like it or not. SO the simplest way to protect it is to insure it with us. Our policies start at just £1.99 per month for a smartphone with the Samsung Galaxy S5 costing just £4.39 per month for standard cover.
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