It's water resistant but water damage isn't covered under warranty? How can you have it both ways like that?
"Water resistance IP67 under IEC standard 60529. Liquid damage not covered under warranty."
How does one make such a big deal of it being water resistant (Product film: 1m 35s; "...to make this the first water resistant iPhone") but not cover liquid damage under warranty?
Probably because it's water resistant not water proof. You can't put it 50m under water for a few days and then complain it's damaged. I guess if they are saying it's water resistant they have tested pretty extensively and can guarantee that under the conditions they say it will not get damaged. Not great that the customer has to place their trust in the company regarding that though.
That's precisely why it's spec ip67. It allows them to have their phone independently verified while still leaving the customer on the hook for damage.
Yes, it's unfortunate that if its damages under 50m it's your word versus their word.
All I really care about is rain. It's the only reason I am concerned with getting drenched in a rainstorm as an adult. The contents of my wallet will survive, but I am worried about relaxing and walking at a slow pace in a thunderstorm that soaks me through and through - all because of my phone.
A water resistant rating that indicates I should be fine walking home slowly and enjoying getting drenched, instead of speed walking to save my electronic device, is all I am asking for. If the risk of destroying my phone because I like to stroll through the rain just dropped to < 0.1%, that is good enough for me.
The series 1 watch had the same caveats but proved very water resistant in practice. To make stronger promises you need to understand how the seals age and how the device behaves in lots of situations, or you need to over-engineer it with bulky seals and other compromises. You also need to understand and deal with extremely tight manufacturing tolerances.
If Apple said the iPhone was waterproof people would take it scuba diving then post YouTube videos showing how "crapp" the new iPhone is, then we'd have watergate (lol) all over the tech press.
Much like Trump/Hillary, people don't hold anyone else to the same high standard they hold Apple to. (If Trump manages to not vomit on himself at the first debate he'll be declared the winner by the media. )
For reference, I took my supposedly not-shower-proof Apple Watch diving to 30 feet and it was fine. I could even use the touchscreen and heart rate monitor underwater to some extent.
They're not saying the glass is unbreakable, they say it's strong. Water resistant sounds entirely different from 'should survive small splashes' and doesn't add anything if it's not actually watertight. I already use my android phone in the rain, covering it as well as I can, and take the risk. Or hope it survives when splashing water over it. That works, so the next step is actually being watertight.
Fwiw, the main Dutch tech news site just headlined with "waterdichte iphone", literally "water tight". Yeah, legally they make no promises but they definitely know what impression it gives.
But glass has some base-level strength you can rely on. Imagine if there was a chance of the glass shattering while you hold the phone gently in one hand, and the warranty excluded the glass.
But in the field, anything can mess that up, e.g. pressure applied to a small point.
If I drop my phone on the ground screen first, I have an idea that it might not break, but it might break. If it doesn't, I'm happy it survived, and if it does I don't go out and sue Apple.
Same if my phone gets hit in a rain storm by a bunch of drops of water.
The point is: If you don't abuse your phone by dropping it on the ground, you know the warranty protects you. If you gently splash your phone, it's very possible it could break because it was defectively sealed, but the warranty won't help. Lots of products that are supposedly water resistant to X degree have not lived up to their labels. They should not be claiming any level of water resistance if they're going to categorically exclude water damage. It's one thing to say it is more likely to survive a splash than previous phones. But they're making a very specific claim that a certain amount of water is safe. That claim should have teeth.
Double standard. They shouldn't claim any amount of breakage resistance if they are going to categorically exclude trauma damage from their warranty. There is plenty of precedence for best effort claims backed by laboratory testing but that don't actually have teeth in warranties (car crash testing).
But the warranty does cover the screen just exploding out of nowhere. The key difference is with a screen there has to be trauma to exclude it from warranty. With water, even laying it super-gently under one inch for thirty seconds is not covered, when it's supposed to be safe for thirty minutes at five feet.
Car crash standards are okay, because the car always crumples, and they don't make promises like "you can crash a car at up to X pressure and the crash will not penetrate and cause damage". If a company was parading third-party lab results showing an immunity to 10mph collisions vs. walls, their warranty has no place excluding 5mph collisions vs. walls.
> How does one make such a big deal of it being water resistant (Product film: 1m 35s; "...to make this the first water resistant iPhone") but not cover liquid damage under warranty?
If you brought in a water damaged phone how would you prove that you didn't exceed the rated coverage?
I guess it's because IP67 means it's only "protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m" so it's not really 100% water resistant (nothing is, I guess).
"Water resistance IP67 under IEC standard 60529. Liquid damage not covered under warranty."
How does one make such a big deal of it being water resistant (Product film: 1m 35s; "...to make this the first water resistant iPhone") but not cover liquid damage under warranty?