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Showing posts from May, 2020

Waterproofing explained

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The latest, greatest phones can now survive a dip in the pool. But how manufacturers create and define "water resistance" may surprise you. Plop . That's the sound of your phone impacting a pot of tomato sauce. Or a swimming pool. Or -- God forbid -- a toilet bowl. Normally, you're screwed. Unless you're very, very lucky (and have some silica gel packets handy), your phone's delicate circuits are toast. But if you've got a water-resistant phone like the new iPhone 7, Galaxy S7, or Sony Xperia XZ, things could be way different. Just rinse off that tomato sauce -- with more water -- and you're back in business. How water resistance works iFixit teardown engineer Scott H avard asks us to picture an egg: a perfect, unbroken shell. There's no place for water to get in. Now replace that egg with a plastic Easter egg, and you begin to see the difficulty. That's a lot of holes to protect. "If you have an Easter egg that