Is iPhone 7 waterproof or not? reviews. Why water protection on iPhones doesn't protect them from water
Apple's iPhone 7 has received such quality as water resistance. The manufacturer took care of reliable protection phone according to a certain IP67 standard. This class designates protection against water ingress and contamination by sand and dust. The abbreviation IP stands for protection against intrusion by foreign agents. This designation is applied to various electrical devices (lamps, electrical installations). In our case, the first digit designates the safety class against the ingress of solid particles into the devices. The second means the degree of protection from exposure to liquids.
In progress iPhone testing 7 was immersed under water to a depth of about 1 meter and it was found that the iPhone 7 can survive under water for about 30 minutes. At the same time, Apple does not provide a guarantee for repairs in the event of a breakdown, which is clearly stated in the instructions for use. Here is a set of actions for drying and cleaning from damaging environmental factors. After liquid gets on your phone, dry it thoroughly and wipe it with a dry cloth. There is another method - using rice as an absorbent for liquid. Let's look at everything in order:
- Remove the phone from the container;
- Turn it off by pressing the “Power” button;
- Delete protective film screen;
- Remove the SIM card;
- Wipe with a cloth, paying special attention to the headphone jack and USB cable.
Place the phone in the bag of rice and close it. After 30-60 hours you can remove it. Remember that no service will repair the device for free.
Despite the waterproofness of the iPhone 7, after a year of use, its materials and mechanisms, like any other type of equipment, wear out and will not pass such a test. Of course, nothing will happen to it if the effect of moisture is insignificant and short-term, for example, seasonal precipitation or an accidental fall into a container with liquid.
What technical characteristics make the phone resistant to moisture?
When the S7 and GalaxyS7 were immersed to a depth of about 1.5 meters, they worked properly. As soon as they were lowered just below the 9-meter depth, interruptions in work began. Samsung rebooted, and the phone's seventh model stopped responding to touch. Despite all the experiments, both models remained in full working order. The trials didn't end there. Having immersed both phones to a depth of 10 meters, Samsung did not turn on, although LED indicator continued to work, but the moisture protection Apple smartphone turned out to be much better, the touchscreen and the Home button still turned on. The long-term presence of the iPhone 7 under water is ensured by the buttons, housing and SIM card slot with a rubber seal. Additional protection against water is achieved using a special gasket located inside the communicator body. The chips on the board are coated with silicone, which protects against short circuits. For now, the spaces with the power buttons, speaker, audio jacks, and volume control buttons remain in the danger zone. The creators of Apple are already working on this problem.
How to protect your gadget from exposure to liquid yourself?
The process of applying Broad HI-Tech NANO liquid film to a phone screen
- Open package No. 1;
- Wipe the display;
- Apply the product to the screen;
- Open package No. 2;
- Rub the liquid evenly;
- We wait 5 minutes;
- Open package No. 3;
- Polishing the screen.
The process is over. With this coating, sand and hard debris will not scratch the screen, and the liquid will simply roll off in large drops, without even having time to seep inside the device.
How to make a protective case for underwater photography
When planning a walk along the sea or a country beach, you need to think in advance about how your gadget can handle this little adventure. The simplest and least expensive method is to pack it in a plastic bag. You will still be able to work with the touch screen as before. In addition, it will help protect against the entry of fine sand, which can cause quite a few problems. The advantage of this method is the low cost of packaging.
Developers of equipment accessories came up with protective cases. They greatly increase the shock resistance and moisture resistance of even thin phone models. The disadvantage is the high cost of the covers. If you are planning active recreation On the water, you can make a case for protection yourself. To make it, you only need to purchase a plastic bottle or jar with a screw cap.
Now, in stores you can find a product that resembles appearance a bottle of Flash Flood nail polish, which can make your equipment water-repellent.
It is necessary to treat the device’s display, battery, and sometimes the entire phone body, and when the product dries, confidently go to the beach or demonstratively try to drown it in a container of water and shoot videos.
Despite the vaunted water resistance in latest models iPhone, they are often die after contact with liquid. Try typing “iPhone 7 fell into water” into Google; the search engine will tell you what happens next.
Remember, the 7 (and the new 8 and 10) is not an action camera. You can forget about beautiful underwater shots taken on your iPhone.
And here's why:
1. IP67 is not a panacea
All iPhones, starting from 7, received a body protection rating of IP67. Don't get me wrong, smartphones haven't become sealed, and they don't come in a water bottle. iPhone can still be damaged by moisture.
Here's how to decipher the abbreviation IP67:
IP- Ingress Protection
6
- Dustproof
7
- Short-term immersion to a depth of up to 1 m
It turns out that the smartphone is completely protected from dust, but this should not surprise anyone. But the iPhone floats in water for up to 30 minutes, and even then it’s shallow. However, it cannot be used.
2. Laboratory tests are far from real conditions
IP67, like other standards, has been verified under controlled experimental conditions. In real life this won't work.
There is a 99% chance that the smartphone will be affected by other forces that will increase the pressure under water. You don’t have to jump into the pool from a tower; everything will change even if you just drop your iPhone from a sufficient height. Counter flows of water can “break through” the water protection of the device.
The composition of the water also affects the degree of waterproofness. Sea salt accelerates the oxidation process, and chlorinated liquid is not the best environment for an electronic device.
By the way, smartphones are tested in standby mode - read “in reduced power consumption mode.” Once you start the Camera or some complex process, power consumption will increase, which means that if moisture gets in, the contacts will oxidize faster.
3. Smartphone wear and tear reduces water resistance
Fact: If you strap your iPhone to your hand, it will still fall someday. And any careless impact on the device can lead to a decrease in the effectiveness of the water protection elements. This is what Apple says:
Resistance to splashes, water and dust is not permanent and may decrease due to normal wear and tear.
It’s not for nothing that flooded iPhones are not repaired under warranty. And here one inconvenient conclusion arises:
iPhone 7, 8, X are afraid of water, just like the old ones
Yes, a smartphone out of the box can be carefully placed in water for a couple of hours, it will dry out and continue working. But how can you find out the water resistance status of your iPhone? How to take into account all the factors affecting pressure under water? No way.
Water resistance is just an additional layer of protection in case of emergency. This is not a feature new iPhones. You should not specifically wash it under running water or dive into the pool with your smartphone. But you don’t have to worry about using iPhone in the rain or snow. But even with the old 3GS I didn’t think much about it.
And for this reason the minijack fell.
P.S. iPhone 7 and older can be safely placed in a bag of rice. Dust protection is still complete. The truth is in this absolutely no point.
Just to make the service guys laugh.
Is it possible to take pictures underwater on iPhone 7? This question is probably asked by everyone who is planning to go on vacation in the hot summer or winter to warm countries. On the one hand, the owner knows that the iPhone 7 (Plus) claims to support IP67 level protection and this allows the smartphone to “swim” at a depth of 1 meter for up to 30 minutes, but on the other hand, this is somehow scary. To calm you down a little, we've even put together a series of online tests:
But let's get back to photos and videos. One thing can be noted right away - getting water inside the iPhone is not a warranty case, so you should take this into account before diving. So, let's look at the main nuances.
1. You can take pictures underwater
But there is a certain peculiarity here. The thing is that it doesn't work in water touch screen and you physically cannot press the camera shutter button. No matter where you point, the display does not respond.
What are the solutions?
- You can use the volume button to take a photo
- You can go around and try using a Bluetooth remote control for a selfie stick, having previously enclosed it in a polyethylene shell, but there is also a nuance here - in water, wireless signals travel very poorly and it is not a fact that it will work correctly
- You can use a special box, cover or case, which, as a rule, has physical buttons.
Here is a photo of such a box:
According to the manufacturer, it has a degree of protection higher than that of the smartphone itself - IP68.
And here is the video
2. How to shoot video
Essentially everything is the same. Among the features, we can note the possible distortions that will occur in water. However, the lens on the iPhone is flat and there should not be strong distortions, but for greater accuracy there is a case like this
Here we see a special glass located immediately above the two cameras. This is very convenient and also saves us from excess water and distortion.
Even at the presentation stage, the iPhone 7 was declared waterproof and protected according to the IP67 standard, which essentially means that the smartphone can be safely immersed in water to a depth of no more than 1 meter, and for no more than 30 minutes.
But many users are interested in the question: is it possible to wet the seventh in different waters, including: pool, sea, bath. We tried to figure it out.
1. Immersion in the sea for a day
The harsh author of this video immersed an iPhone 7 in the Dead Sea for as much as 24 hours. What happened to the iPhone? Within a day, the battery in it was discharged, but after the author removed it from the water, dried it and charged it, the device worked again!
It would seem that the water is very salty, the smartphone lies in it for much longer than 30 minutes and the contacts will probably oxidize, or maybe it won’t turn on again? But no, the iPhone 7 withstood this test.
I would like to say hello to the engineers Samsung who claim that their Galaxy S7 cannot be dipped in salt water
Visually, all functions work perfectly, but time will tell how long the device will survive after such a dive is another question. Well, an additional proof will be the following video, where fish are filmed in the Red Sea on an iPhone 7. Purely visually, the depth here is about a meter, and the dive is about 2 minutes.
2. iPhone 7 in the pool
So now it's time to put your smartphone in the pool. The author of the video tries to swim with an iPhone in the pool. One of the features is that the water is well chlorinated, which also creates an additional danger to all metal elements of the device.
In such conditions, you can make a beautiful Slow Motion video, for example, when you jump into a pool, the main thing is not to drop your iPhone on the tiles at this moment.
The result is that the device withstood all the dives perfectly and even shot excellent videos that you can show to your friends.
3. Full test at maximum depth
For these purposes, he built a huge vessel, into which he poured fresh water and placed the apparatus there. The depth turned out to be 1-1.5 meters. To complete the test, we also added Samsung Galaxy S7.
After 37 minutes, both devices were removed from the water and were functioning perfectly. But it’s worth noting that during the dive process, the screen of the iPhone 7 glowed, and the Galaxy S7 went out and it seemed that it had turned off, but no, after removal the device continued to work.
So is iPhone 7 waterproof or not?
Now you can answer this question yourself. We tried to look at IP67 protection from different angles and collected all the information on the topic for you. Is it worth buying an iPhone 7 for the purpose of “going on vacation to the sea and filming fish”?
iPhone 7 has become not only the most popular mobile phone high degree of technological excellence. It has also become the most discussed gadget on the Internet. In addition to carefully studying this smartphone, users began to actively experiment with it, trying to prove or disprove this or that fact. They dropped him from a height, tried to burn him and freeze him, but the most frequent and popular experiment was immersion in water. IPhone 7, waterproof or not, at what depth, under what pressure, etc. All these experiments forced the iPhone 7 to remain in water for a long time and the most surprising thing is that all the experiments ended quite unexpectedly for the users.
What were the results during the experiments?
The iPhone 7 Plus and its original model have been the subject of hundreds of different experiments. In 90% of cases, the experiments ended positively; the remaining 10% included complicated experiments that exceeded the norm several times, which is why some unfavorable results of the experimenters’ activities arose. But it doesn’t matter, Model 7 spent a lot of time underwater and in almost every case proved that the technological basis of the model is in order and the developers are not deceiving users by offering a special IP67 protection system for review, which provides maximum protection in terms of water resistance, dust ingress and some damage.
The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus turned out to be surprisingly quite waterproof, water permeability was reduced to almost zero, and even the ability to shoot video and the ability to take photos under water remained unchanged, which greatly surprised the users who conducted the experiments. But still, when comparative analysis iPhone 7 Plus showed itself to be much better, which means in technological terms this model much better.
Marketing ploy or technical excellence?
After the developers of the new technical model announced that their iPhone 7 Plus and the standard model would have improved protection, users began to perceive such statements as some kind of marketing ploy. Nothing can stop water from getting inside and breaking the phone, even if it is at least as protected as possible. However, after conducting a series of experiments, it turned out that the developers respect their reputation and the phone really can withstand water pressure.
According to the technical indicator, the standard model and the plus model can withstand water pressure from the tap and function normally at a depth of 3 meters. That is, if you take a bath, get caught in the rain, or fall into a puddle, the phone will remain unharmed. Yes, scratches may remain on the case, but the phone itself will definitely survive such a nuisance. Even after carrying out complicated experiments, it turned out that the phone can remain operational until it sinks to a depth of 10 meters, but the likelihood of such a situation is extremely low. But you can safely use the phone in the pouring rain and nothing will happen to it.
iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are legendary latest phones new generation. In addition to technological excellence, they allow you to use their functionality at any time without any problems, without fear of breakdowns and simply enjoy the quality. But we immediately warn you that it is better not to conduct experiments personally; the fact is that the agreement contains a clause stating that if the phone is damaged as a result of water, then the phone is not subject to warranty service.
