[Huawei Mate 20 Pro Guides, News, & Discussion] DK_Unbegrenzt:
Nowadays, water resistance feature becomes a must-have feature of flagship smartphones in the market. People talk about IP53, IP67, IP68 when discussing and comparing the top flagship smartphones. But do we have in-depth understanding of smartphones’ water resistance feature? Can you count on water resistance feature of smartphones and bring them to take a shower whenever we like to? Let go check it out!

What will happen if water seeps into our phones?

One of the malfunctions when water seeps into our phones is black screen. Water is conductive as we all know. So when water seeps into a working phone, it causes short-circuit issue to the integrated circuit and power supply circuit, the CPU, power IC and certain components are burnt out and the screen turn black in the end.

The other one is data chaos. When our phone drops into water and we quickly pick it up and remove the water to save it. It seems that our phone is saved luckily, but after water evaporates, there is impurity and electrolyte remained on the circuits. They corrode the capacitors and resistors on the PCB. They change the design parameter of PCB. In this way, they degrade the phone’s performance and cause data chaos eventually.

Waterproof rating

We heard a lot of people talking about IP67/IP68. But what does the rating stand for? Let’s check out the definition. IP here is short for Ingress Protection. The first digit behind the letter “P” indicates the level of solid particle protection while the second digit indicates the level of liquid ingress protection. 6 is the highest rating dust resistant while 8 is the highest water resistant rating. So a phone with IP68 waterproof rating has the highest IP rating in the market, such as HUAWEI Mate20 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S9 and Apple iPhone XS Max. Below two sheets show us the meaning of some common ratings.

How to make the phone water-resistant?

There are two main water-resistant solutions in the industry. They’re structural waterproofing and nanotechnology waterproofing.

Structural Waterproofing

If you disassemble certain latest flagship phone, you probably will find there’re water resistant adhesive on the joint of the phone housing. Structural waterproofing use this method to prevent water from seeping inside the phone.

It is important to note that the adhesive may peel off after long time usage or dropping, which impacts the water resistant performance.

Nanotechnology Waterproofing

For this solution, the exterior surface is coated with Nano material to prevent water from seeping inside. As the gap of Nano material particle is so small that water drop couldn’t seep through the coating but still way bigger than water molecule, hence water molecule could evaporate through the coating. That is the magic of Nanotechnology waterproofing.

Nano coating can also be spary over a piece of paper. So the paper become water resistant.

Why not promote the use of water resistant solutions widely?

It is all because of money. The cost of water resistant material is high. Normally, only the cost of water resistant film on the camera and USB port can be as high as US$3 per phone. Besides, there are cost of water resistant adhesive between the screen and frame and cost of water-proof test. Therefore, we can find that these water-proof smartphone is always flagship phone of famous brands with a price over US$700.

Conclusion

We should all note that although the flagship phones with IP68 water-proofing degree, they can only prevent statics water. When placed into running water, these phones do not have the same water-proofing performance as they have in static water. They’re only expected to be able to stay and work normally for 30 minutes in 1.5m-deep static water. So it is better to treat your beloved phone nicely and try to prevent them from water as you do to normal ones

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