Waterproof Mobile Phones

Look around you, there must be at least a couple of water bottles, maybe a glass or two with a liquid or spilled water around. And now, just imagine slowly some of this liquid pouring out and falling on your dear smartphone, which holds more valuable information and data than anything other than perhaps your bank account. And while it may have been a bit of a luxury or a demand made too far ahead, waterproofing your smartphone is something that is a very valuable feat.

If you live in an area where monsoons are heavy like Mumbai, then your smartphone, unless water proof will be rendered useless outdoors for a good three months of the year. Accident falling, or careless placement can also cause water to seep into your device, creating issues with the display or even the internal boards of the phone giving you a hefty bill to take care of in order to get your device repaired. Having a waterproof smartphone not only gives you that insurance, but also gives you assurance of peace of mind, that no matter what may come at least there is one force of nature that you do not have to worry about with your phone.

It is worth noting that every device that is waterproof will come with a certain set IP rating. IP Rating stands for Ingress Protection, and has been developed by International Electrotechnical Commission and basically gives you an indication of how resistant to water is your device. The way to read any IP rating is that the first digit gives you the resistance to dust while the second digit gives you resistance to water. The first digit always will be in between 0 to 6 while the second digital will be between 0 and 9. Therefore a phone rated at IP67 will have a rating of 6/6 for dust resistance and 7/9 for water resistance. Higher the digits, obviously mean higher is the resistance. Most of the waterproof devices today come with an IP rating of 67 or 68 which usually means that while the phone is completely dust resistant, you can only submerge it in water for about 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter. Earlier in order to make phones waterproof, brands like Sony needed flaps on top of ports in order to prevent water going into them, however with advance in materials technology, the likes of Xperia Z5 and HTC Desire eye are completely waterproof even with no port flaps. Previously, only expensive phones used to be water resistant, but now you have phones priced under Rs. 30,000, phones priced under Rs. 20,000 and even phones priced under Rs. 10,000, that have some kind of water protection.

PS: Remember that there are no true waterproof phones, all of them come with certain resistance levels as explained above, beyond which water will flow through the internals. But it is good to know that they can withstand everyday scenarios better than phones with no water resistance at all.