Google Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: IP68 Protection Doesn't Last (theverge.com) 42
Phone manufacturers rarely acknowledge that IP68 water resistance degrades over time, but Google has broken that silence with advertising disclaimers for its Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The fine print explicitly warns that water and dust protection "will diminish or be lost over time due to normal wear and tear, device repair, disassembly or damage." The company further notes that liquid damage voids warranties despite IP68 certification at manufacture.
Obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Seals dry and become brittle. And if you repair, you have to open the thing, which means you break the seal entirely in many cases, or at least you have to break down the glue by heating it.
This really isn't new or interesting. The only relevant piece of data here would be something among the lines of "how long will seals last as long as they're not damaged by careless or intentional damage?"
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Re:Obviously (Score:4, Informative)
It's worth noting that immersion in a pool is IP69, not IP68, as last numeral 8 is not meant to handle any kind of meaningful pressure. Last numeral 9 is the one that requires being able to handle pressure while immersed.
Pools would generally be deep enough to require at least IP69, though realistically you want ATM ratings for them instead as IP69 does not specify pressures. ATM does.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia: ... Test duration: agreement with the manufacturer, Depth specified by the manufacturer, generally up to 3 meters (9.8 ft)
IPx7: Immersion, up to 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) depth
IPx8: Immersion, 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) or more depth
IPx9: Powerful high-temperature water jets
World Aquatics specifications for an Olympic-size pool are as follows:
Depth: 2 m (6 ft 7 in) minimum, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) recommended when using the pool for multi discipline.
So, "generally" IP68 devices should survive swimming pools but the depth and time depend on the manufacturer.
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Your daily reminder for everyone who upvote this that wikipedia lies. All the time.
Go look at the original source, not at opinionated drivel that is wikipedia:
https://www.iec.ch/ip-ratings [www.iec.ch]
Free basic explanation from IEC.
If you want full spec text, it's here:
https://webstore.iec.ch/en/pub... [webstore.iec.ch]
In a nutshell: pressure while immersed is NOT specified at any IP rating. This is largely why IP68 and IP69 have become basically meaningless, and this is why Google had to post this sort of a disclamer.
IP ratings in gene
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There's another factor: Time. The time duration is important to survivability in an IP rating. Typically the duration is listed as 30min. If you quickly dunk your IP68 rated device even in a 4m deep pool it may survive if it's a relatively short duration as an IP rating is rated for prevention of *ALL* moisture ingress, and not complete flooding.
I've had this happen. I had a breach in an underwater housing causing it to get flooded while diving and my phone (Galaxy S22 with IP68 rating) was completely immer
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Forgot to mentioned the phone survived.
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Does it float? Because if it doesn't, and you don't have a good friend [youtube.com] nearby, it's a goner in many situations.
Years ago, I bought a Minolta Weathermatic [camera-wiki.org] camera. Good down to 5 meters. But I tested it in the kitchen sink. If I drop it, it floats at the surface.
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What one man can seal, another can unseal and reseal as well as the original was. Just takes the skill, material, and time. Given the usual quality of say, a Wal-Mart or strip mall cell phone shop, one might as well throw away the phone and just buy a new one and save time, money and aggravation. Good techs in anything are hard to come by because the pay usually sucks.
TL:DR
Used to work on down hole oil well measuring devices such as gyroscopic mappers, gamma ray, neutron, induction, acoustic and core sample
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and equipment designed to be sealed once and never touched again.
Consumers should have a choice of buy disposable tech with forever landlords, or equipment designed to be serviced and the ability to actually own what you pay for. But it doesn't matter what price one puts on "forever" devices when business demands a forever revenue stream, with the lowest possible ability of the consumer to say "no" to never ending fees.
An example is the automobile - they are getting more and more to the point where if you don't go to the dealer for repair, you've got a paperweight with a
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But there isn't a market for 'forever' devices. Like it or not, the consumers have spoken.
And besides, how do you have 'forever' tech when tech advances so quickly?
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It is definitely 'new' and interesting for most of the consumers out of our tech-savvy bubble, who doesn't know anything about how smartphones are made.
And I bet the disclaimer was added precisely because enough consumers were complaining and demanding replacements for damaged devices.
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The seals should last the lifetime of the phone. I used to work on products that were submerged permanently for 5 years (limited by battery life) with just rubber seals. Actually the real killer was that the previous version of the product used a plastic case, and moisture eventually gets through the plastic. Switched to metal extruded tubes for the new version.
They glue everything up ... so why not? (Score:2)
Keep the sdcard slot hermetically separate from the inside, use a seal with a thermoset polymer (and sell them for repair).
Until the glass cracks, I don't see why these glued up bricks can't be waterproof.
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Phones don't have SD card slots anymore, where have you been?
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And most of these new Pixels don't even have SIM slots. Pretty sure they'll all eSIM now, like the iPhones - EXCEPT for the Fold. Pretty sure I read that one still has a physical SIM tray.
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I think the hardest thing to waterproof are the speakers and microphones, there is also the barometer, USB port, SIM tray, and buttons, I'd say in that order from hard to easy.
Speakers and microphones are particularly hard because you need to let the sound through with minimal resistance, and the better you waterproof these, the worse the sound will be, it is a tradeoff. The usual solution is to use a water repellent membrane made of very thin mesh that lets the air pass through but not the water. But these
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I have a CAT phone. They advertise you can go scuba diving with it. I haven't gone that far with it but mine's been in a lake. All the ports have rubber seals. The latch that lets you access the SIM card and SD card has a seal around it. The speaker and mic have internal covers that slide over them to make them water proof. Sure it distorts the sound, but when you're under water the sound is distorted anyway. Though even if the speakers do get wet, they include a special app to play specific sounds t
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The moving part of speakers/microphones are a surface which is trivially waterproof and sometimes a diaphragm, always using a diaphragm and making it waterproof compromises a bit on efficiency/sensitivity but it's easily doable.
Ports and slots just need to be physically isolated from the interior with cured polymer sealing for the wires (repair will be slightly more annoying, but it's already a glued up brick, add a bit more). The slots need more fallible seals too for user access, but worst that need happe
So (Score:2)
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if there is any evidence of water exposure then it nullifies your warranty anyways, regardless of whether it's been marketed as "waterproof."
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... then that would be false advertising.
"Buy our waterproof phone!"
"It broke because it got wet. warranty claim denied"
That opens them up to refunding the purchase, because the claims they made were false.
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Maybe, technical warranty claims are for manufacturing defects. Can you prove the water proofness wasn't defeated by your own mishandling of the device?
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Can you prove any manufacturing defect wasn't caused by mishandling?
Who needed that warning? (Score:2)
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The IP68(K) or IPXYZ rating is only valid for a certain span of time, if the rating is a critical consideration you generally have to get systems retested, or, perform serious testing to show environmental response.
Nobody is asking for it to be a critical consideration, but if a product advertises water resistance, it is reasonable for a consumer to expect that it will not die if you get it wet during the warranty period, so long as the user doesn't modify the device. A warranty is expected to cover any manufacturing defects, and the way I see it, if a product that is advertised as water resistant has water ingress during the warranty period, 99.99999% of the time, that's a manufacturing defect, and the warranty abso
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I've done an annoying amount of environmental testing for products, and when you make a claim like IP68(K), there is a time span connected to it, and a likelihood of failure. Usually, unless th
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It's unethical to claim IP68 for the life of the product, when you know the life could be 10+ years. The argument that IP68 should be active during the warrant period, 100%. My point is that IP68(K) is rarely rated for the lifetime of the product, and the fact Google is pointing that out should not be surprising.
Totally fair. That said, I'm not even sure it's worth mentioning the lifespan of protection in that context. You'd expect a silicone gasket to last at least a decade if not disturbed, and I doubt that even ~0.0000000001% of devices will still be in active use after that long. :-)
Repairs, however, are worth mentioning, because the manufacturer obviously can't guarantee factory sealing after a repair; it depends on whether they do the repair correctly.
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Different product market, but I had a product once that needed foam replacement. The company, kept sending me fo
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OK, but you just described the entirety of marketing in the U.S.
Target demographic for folding phones (Score:2)
Right now, it seems like these phones are targeted at the folks who upgrade every year or two - despite the price.
I love the idea in theory, but until it's apparent these sorts of devices can be expected to function well for a minimum of four years... I'm not even going to consider them. My iPhones, my Apple Watches, even an old Android I had before the iPhones - they all were still chugging along at that age.
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When I was younger I definitely wouldn't have been the type to upgrade more often, but the advances were also far more significant then as well. I'm not sure
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I usually aim for at least six years on a phone and that's something that's likely to grow longer. There's very little reason to upgrade every two years as far as I'm concerned.
Now a days it's as much about the security and OS updates. Not saying you can't run on an outdated OS, but you will eventually get left behind. Definitely not an "every two" concern, but 6+ years it certainly can be. Google/Samsung(flagship models)/Apple generally have a 5-7 year update, but a lot of the rest usually only cover a few years.
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Calling BS Now (Score:2)
This is Google's excuse for building something half ass. I have a handheld Garmin GPS from 2004-2005 that I mount to my kayak, it frequently gets wet, sometimes submerged for a few minutes at a time when my kayak flips over. It still works fine, just as it did when I bought it.
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