76 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] thread
NSFH warning!

Take the title literally. I interpreted the title as "Webapp that creates natural water sound using your phone", so I clicked the play button without realizing this is NOT a water sound.

This is a tone that is played which expels water that got into the phone from the speaker, using the outward pressure created by the tone. Really cool idea.

My bad. I should have put some type of warning
Likely inspired by the Apple Watch feature. I’m surprised Apple didn’t build this into their phones as well. Good job!
You're technically not supposed to submerge your iPhone; it voids their warranty. (It drives me mad that they do this in their advertisements, but I guess showing people doing things that would void their device's warranty is not false advertising…)
Seriously? Wow that’s all kinds of messed up to advertise and then tell people not to do. As a society, we’re in a pretty bad place when it comes to how much we simply expect false-ish advertising.
Perhaps tangential but I wanted to mention that if anyone else is looking to take photos under water at shallowish depths (about 10m at most), I found a cheap and reliable waterproof case with camera trigger button that I’ve been happy with.

The camera trigger button of the case works by mechanically pushing the volume button on your phone, which when the built-in photo app of your phone is open works to take photos.

https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005001374646779.html

It fits many different models, including my iPhone X.

Still I take a couple of precautions with it. First time I used it, I put paper inside of it instead of my phone inside of it and submerged it for a while to see that it didn’t leak. And when I use it I always dry it off completely after use on the outside before opening it and then carefully inspect the inside to be sure that it still didn’t leak. If you do find a leak after use, treat it like you would treat dropping your phone into water unprotected. That is, if there was a leak turn the phone off, dry the outside of the phone with paper and put the phone in an open box with a lot of rice and keep it there for an appropriate amount of time to have the rice absorb as much moisture as possible.

I’ve seen these work down to 30m without any problems.
> dry the outside of the phone with paper and put the phone in an open box with a lot of rice

iFixIt claims this is just psychological comfort and offers this advice:

> The real secret to water damage? You don't want to dry it!

> What you want to do is first displace the water—or more specifically, all the conductive stuff in the water. You can do this best by using 90%+ isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol and a toothbrush. Open your device as soon as you can, take out the battery, and get scrubbing. Submerge the whole motherboard in alcohol, and scrub away.

https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Don%27t_Put_Your_Device_in_Rice.......

(as noted in the reply, there's 3 dots that are filtered from the end of the URL, so try adding them manually or copy below)

    https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Don%27t_Put_Your_Device_in_Rice._Here%27s_Why...
iPhones are all locked up, so ifixit's advice is worse than useless... it just serves to frustrate. What use is telling people to open up an iPhone when regular people don't have the tools to do so?
iFixit sells the tools to do so and provides detailed guides on how to use them.

It might sound like a racket to you, but at this point they've saved me something like half a grand net, minimum, on phone repair and replacement, by making it possible for me to do that work myself and thus not have to replace phones nearly so often.

Most recently, this came in useful when I actually did drop a phone in water, just like we're talking about here, and was able to not only clean it out but also replace the battery, which swelled quite alarmingly in the aftermath.

But surely it'll almost always be too late? Say I drop my phone in water and google how to fix it. I find this article and buy their tools. By the time I get them, my phone has been corroding for two days.
It is possible to obtain the tools and skills prior to the accident.
Corrosion is a relatively slow process. As long as the display seal is intact and the phone isn't immersed for too long, it should prevent the kind of water ingress that's immediately fatal, and you very likely can get the tools and arrest the process before it damages any functionality.

The phone I dropped in the sink had a compromised seal due to a prior drop that bent in a corner of the case - something I did actually have the tool to fix, but hadn't got to actually fixing before the drop, thinking I had time. Of course, I thought I didn't need screen protectors either, until I dropped a phone and broke a screen for the lack of one - so, while I'm apparently pretty good at learning to fix phones, my ability to learn from experience may need improvement. It was the damaged seal that let in enough water to compromise the battery, but even so it stayed working long enough for me to pull a backup before I shut it down and took it apart. They're tougher than their size and cost make them seem, and these are just 1st-gen iPhone SEs - I expect the newer ones with glued-in displays are better still at preventing moisture ingress.

(Glued-in screens are harder to work on, but not impossible; I've fixed a phone with one, for a friend. You just need a heat gun and a lot of patience, is all. Regluing a new display seems like it'd be the hardest part; my friend just needed it working enough for data recovery, but maybe next time I'll get to find out.)

> Regluing a new display seems like it'd be the hardest part; my friend just needed it working enough for data recovery, but maybe next time I'll get to find out.

If he has the phone laying around still, you could practice putting the screen back. This way when you need to do so on another phone in the future then you already know how to do it :D

It's a good idea! Unfortunately, this particular phone had one side so badly bashed in that there'd be no fitting the display properly back into it, in any case. I'm sure I'll get my chance sooner or later, though!
I have read good things about the Panasonic Lumix cameras.

They older models seem to be around $100 and go to about 20 feet.

Newer models seem to be around $350 to $500.

Seems like a lower risk.

I submerged my iPhone XS on several occasions, thinking it was OK to do. Eventually the FaceID sensor stopped working.
(comment deleted)
Clearly Apple isn't concerned, since they published this three days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCQpOaR3sVo
Relax, it’s iPhone*

*until you do the thing we showed in our commercial and break your phone. When you come to the Genius Bar, we’ll point out that the commercial did in fact warn you to not do the thing we clearly showed in the commercial. Sucker!

That’s about the iPhone 12, which they say is better than previous models (https://www.apple.com/iphone-12/specs/ says (in a footnote) “iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini are splash, water, and dust resistant and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions with a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes). Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions. Liquid damage not covered under warranty.”

The Italian fine is about iPhone ≤ 11, about which they (¿now?) have a similar footnote at https://www.apple.com/iphone-11/specs/

It looks like they skirt pretty closely around "submerging" the device. At no point in the commercial is it actually submerged in a body of water.
But you can always dry your iPhone in the microwave?! Or could you charge it that way, I'm not sure anymore...
(comment deleted)
Lots of car commercials show them performing well in an accident, but nobody expects crash damage to be covered by warranty. Why must phones be held to a different standard?
Well, the phone being dunked in water, the end result being advertised, is that it is still a fully functional device, not that it was sacrificed to protect oneself from physical harm.

The cars, after they crash, do not work anymore.

Making a product resist damage shouldn’t confer insurance against said damage. Apple also uses Gorilla Glass so you can drop your phone a dozen times without damage. Are people mad at Apple for not covering every cracked screen?
Showing a car siding crash damage is quite different to speaking a phone still working, and manufactures of cars world be sued info oblivion if the advertised crash safety performance wasn't actually achieved.
Do you have an example of a commercial that shows the car being advertised performing unrealistically in a collision?

I'm curious because most of the commercials with car collisions I could find are actually safety PSAs, not commercials for a specific make and model.

Aside from those, I found some examples of a brand showing the aftermath of a collision (very briefly) in an ad that skirts the line between being a PSA and a testimonial. Interestingly, most of these were from Subaru.

In any case, that's still quite far from the phone commercial, where the phone is put into a situation that voids the warranty, but no physical damage or any indication thereof is shown. A comparable car commercial would need to show a car in a collision (or compromising condition) that performs unrealistically and ultimately gets away completely unscathed.

My intuition would be that most car advertisers wouldn't want to associate their vehicle with such a scenario, nor set unrealistic expectations around safety critical product features, outside of maybe product placement in a James Bond film.

So, I'm very curious, do you have any examples of comparable car commercials that you could share?

Only if the white water indicator inside the SIM card port turns red or pink, there’s an O ring around the sim tray to provide the water resistance
Cat S60 had this before the apple watch did.
If you're wondering how effective this is, the Slow Mo Guys has filmed it working in slow motion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIEwy8rPik4
Kinda genius, but also kinda make me think that the Apple Watch is useless near water? Lots of people here have said they prefer the Apple Watch to a more dedicated fitness watch (like a Garmin FR 945), but looks like that's only possible in dry conditions.
It can do fitness tracking while swimming, but the main input is a touchscreen so it's not really made to be operated while wet.
FWIW, check out myNoise https://mynoise.net/
this is cool! Thanks for sharing.
Neat!

Today I Learned, it's Gregorian Chanting and not Georgian Chanting, and it has nothing to do with the country of Georgia.

The best part is that its not even an app. Just go to the link on your phone and press that button. Simple as.
I never knew my phone could be this loud.
I never knew my phone had a little tiny fan.
I wanted to see whether this sound could also be used to amuse my cat, and I can conclusively report that she is not amused.
> So you've dropped your phone in the toilet,

Would you guys pick it up? I am not sure what I would do.

Edit: of course, I would not let it clog the drain. I mean would you use it afterward.

I'd pick it up. Pee and poo washes off and phones are expensive, not to mention non-trivial to replace.
A phone is ten to twenty hours of minimum wage, and probably a few hundred kilograms of CO2. Not to mention the stuff stored on it. Of course I'd pick it up.
More like 100-200 hours of minimum wage if it’s a nice phone.
$145 before taxes are removed for working 20 hours.

It would take 97 hours of untaxed minimum wage work to purchase an iPhone 12 mini.

I guess it shows that I only buy used crap phones.
Have and did. Got lucky as it chugged along fine for a couple of years more after.
Even if I don't want the phone anymore, I definitely don't want to leave it for a plumber.
What alternative is there to picking it up? Flushing it down the drain?
I was out at a bar and one of my friends came back from the bathroom and said their was a phone in the toilet. We asked what she did and she said she tried to flush it. Since that doesn't really work, the phone was still in the toilet.

My wife went in to the bathroom with the girl to get the phone and before my wife could reach in, the girl tried to flush it again!

The phone still didn't fit down the toilet so my wife grabbed it, wiped it off, and then held onto it for a little while. The phone got a few notifications and we realized it actually belonged to another friend of ours who had been taken home earlier. (Because she was drunk enough to abandon her phone in the toilet.)

Her boyfriend (now husband) came back to the bar and we gave him the phone (and the backpack she had also forgotten.)

Yes. The trick is to realize that human hands can safely be washed afterwards. Not to mention there are worse things inside the tummy than whats inside the toilet.
you don't even have to use hands, tongs or that cord based snake catcher whom I do not know the name work just as well.

anyway, your tummy != someone else tummy tho.

https://www.livescience.com/fecal-transplant-death.html

you need to thoroughly sterilize both grabber and and phone and whatever else comes in contact with it.

that said, I'd pick it up and suggest people do the same, a phone is today an authentication factor to a lot of services, either directly trough 2fa apps or indirectly trough owner email access.

I mean, it’s a $1400 iPhone that’s some level of water resistant so it’ll work fine when I get it out. (Like, I watch YouTube videos in the shower and occasionally wash it under a tap with soap.)

So yeah, gonna pull it out and wash it and keep using it.

But I’ll never forget.

Kids orient you to poop in a whole new way. I wouldn’t even think about it. Grab it, wash hands, wash phone, wash hands again.
Fresh kids poop has nowhere near the harmful bacteria adult poop infested toilet water has. Also hope you scrub those fingernails as well and make sure no small open wounds on your hands.
So, I would be disgusted for sure, especially if it was not my toilet in my own home.

Hypothetically, I would use a dishwashing glove or simply wrap my hand around a clean garbage bag and use that to retrieve it.

Afterwords, not sure what I would do.

I would probably take it apart to clean, and either way, sell it as a functioning unit if it worked, or part it out and sell the parts or the unit as-is.

So, retrieve soiled phone, get new phone, sell old phone for parts.

What’s the frequency Kenneth!

I’d love to know more about why this tone and not another. Is a resonance thing? Max energy possible thing? Anything special about the shape of the wave?

I pressed the button, it beeped a couple of times, and then while I was scrolling Firefox crashed. First time it happened on my phone!
On iOS there are these Shortcuts you can install in the integrated automation app:

"Water Eject is a simple, yet powerful Siri Shortcut built for iOS and designed to protect your premium Apple devices after being in accidental contact with water by generating an ultra low 165Hz frequency sound wave that propels moisture out from the speaker cavity system."

https://routinehub.co/shortcut/571/

Pretty cool! Might be worth explicitly mentioning that the volume needs to be all the way up for best effect.
I read the title figuratively:

like when something is good quality it blows something out of the water.

Now I'm tempted to hold my phone under a stream of water to test this out.
I didn’t know my iPhone could get that loud