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Comment by drglitch | Hacker News Reader

I took an iPhone X into a 3 foot deep swimming pool to take an underwater selfie (don’t ask, not the proudest moment) and it promptly died - apparently if you drop the phone, the water tight seal has a tendency to fail “silently”. Caveat Emptor :)

Thankfully, AppleCare was in effect and it got replaced for a small deductible.

Great to see gadgets standing up to being used as opposed to needing to be cradled and soothed all the time!

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I took my phone out of the case today and noticed how dirty it, and the case was. I simply washed it off in the sink and it was nice and clean. I couldn’t help but think this was such a strange thing to do but also so natural.

Also, I’ve done underwater selfies too. It’s a lot of fun!

Just remember to let the phone dry fully before charging (unless you’re charging wirelessly of course). Moisture while charging gradually damages both cable and port.

iPhones are actually able to detect this and will give a pop-up saying moisture has been detected in the charging port and charging has been disabled out of safety concerns. It even shows you a bypass button for emergencies!

I get a similar notification when I take Apple Watch surfing. Also took an iPhone 11 in a waterproof bag around my neck for pics, but it was a hassle to zip up the wetsuit, and the bag fogged up.

A warning for what? Apple Watch doesn’t have a charging port

Apple watch gives a moisture warning if the speaker port has water inside. Happens often after swimming or running in rain.

Android also does this

i totally agree

But don't use soap, which reduces the surface tension and lets water get past seals. At the start of the pandemic I used soapy water on my iphone 11 and the faceid sensor broke immediatly. Apple replaced the phone, though.

On the other hand I have a Samsung Active 2 watch which is IPX68 rated and has a swimming mode for a pool swim yesterday, in which it died. It lasted a total of 1 year and 4 months.

It also has an ECG sensor that died for most people(myself included) before Samsung released the ECG mode(one year later).

Oh, I also have that, I shower with it and took it swimming a few times, no problem.

So it's still working and I can fully enjoy the zero apps it has, because no one cares about Tizen, the continuous heartbeat measurement that stopped measuring after the last big update and the ongoing lack of ECG mode that I'm not allowed to use because I don't own a Samsung phone.

And people wonder why Apple owns the high-end smartwatch market.

If you want a laugh go and download the tizen SDK and you will soon understand why nobody develops for it.

I was actually thinking of developing a little app for my GF and me when we both got our GA2, but noped out of it very quickly.

I once dropped my SE into a pond while I was fishing. I didn’t notice until I actually saw the thing at the bottom of the pond. It was probably down there at least 5 minutes.

I fished it out and it worked completely fine. I don’t think SEs were even marketed as waterproof. They still had the headphone jack, which I think was the weakspot

My SE on the other hand did not survive ~ 5 minute dip into the shallow end of the YMCA pool.

But Xs has been great in this regard. And with this pandemic, I regularly wash it with soap and water.

Chlorine can damage the seals especially of something not actually rated as water resistant. Soap is also a weakness and can cause water to bypass the barrier due to water tension lowering.

I took my iphone 5 with me when I fell into a lake in college. The screen was previously all cracked up too. Worked fine still somehow.

Being waterproof and being waterproof against salt water or chlorinated water are different things.

> (don’t ask, not the proudest moment)

don't be ashamed - that had the potential to be a super cool picture.

Same, went swimming with my iPhone 7. It never fully died but the camera clouded up and it totally freaked out to the point of being near unuseable. AppleCare+ ,£70 and replaced in-store. I always get AppleCare+ now.

AppleCare and a store to do the replace at in most major cities is one of the big reasons I stick with apple

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