Why does Apple have the same diving depths for the same numbers? How much does certification cost and who gets paid for it?
Why don't all flagships have an IP in their characteristics? And why you won’t get a guarantee if you drowned your iPhone !!! And then GOST and the US Army? Or maybe all this is pure marketing?
In general, let's try to figure out what and how our smartphones protect and what is still worth fearing.
Let's start with what IP stands for. There seems to be nothing complicated here - Ingress Protection Marking, that is, the encoding of protection against penetration.
The first digit is responsible for the penetration of solid objects: dirt, grains of sand, stones, dust.
The second is for water.
The standard is called IEC 60529 (in Russia - GOST 14254-2015). The larger each individual number, the steeper the protection. At the same time, most smartphones get the highest score - 6. That is, dust (particles up to 75 micrometers) cannot penetrate.
Guess which device didn't get that certification. We give a hint - it folds and unfolds and was even postponed for six months ...
Well, it's clear with the dust. What's with the water? The first thing to know is FRESH water.
In the sea and even chlorinated water of the pool, the gadget's shell may gradually break down: all kinds of rubber inserts and more!
However, if you quickly rinse the device with fresh water, most likely nothing will happen.
Let's go back to the figure. “1” means protection against vertically falling water drops. And the highest "9" points - the impact of high temperature water jets under pressure. Something like a Karcher sink. It is unlikely that ordinary smartphones will receive one of these values ...
There is another interesting point. The device can be certified for only one of the points, then they write, for example, IPX7 or IPX8.
Do not drown. But about dust, we are HZ
. What is the difference between IP67, which, for example, the iPhone SE, from IP68, which appears in most flagships?
If in a simple way, then 67 is a temporary dive. Dropped into a bucket - raised. And 68 is a long stay. But no more than half an hour. And no deeper than 1 meter.
Which smartphones have a rating?
IP68: almost all current iPhone, top Samsung, HUAWEI P40 Pro and Mate 30 Pro, Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL, Sony flagships (remember, there were such). Recently - OnePlus 8 ...
Dust and moisture dissidents, mostly Chinese: vivo, realme, Xiaomi together with the division of redmi, HONOR, Motorola (uh, they dug up the stewardess again).
There is also MIL-STD-810 (but more on that later) - this is something like IP, but on even more serious ones: LG V60 ThinQ 5G, LG G8 ThinQ, CAT S42, Ulefone Armor 7E, Samsung Galaxy X Cover Pro .
Furthermore. It turns out that different brands have different approaches to standards.
The iPhone 11 Pro seems to be IP68 certified, but there is a strange point. Instead of the standard 1 meter, the wording here is up to 4 meters (this is not in the documentation), however, as we found out from a number of documents, the test conditions are subject to agreement between the manufacturer and the consumer.
Bad news, liquid damage is not covered under warranty. This is a one-year warranty for Apple, and for everyone else. Plak-plak !!!
That is, you can bathe your phone, but if something happens, we will not fix it.
It seems that similar practices apply to other brands. It is clear why - it is unlikely that it will be possible to prove where and for how long you bathed your smartphone.
A separate question: how do brands know when a smartphone has been in the water?
This is how you can see the sticker in the iPhone [/ caption]
It turns out that there are special indicator markers inside the smartphone: white on one side, red on the other. If it gets wet, it will turn red all over. And the service center will be in the know. They are placed near the Lightning or USB Type-C connector and on the motherboard. On the iPhone, they are under the SIM card slot and can be seen with the naked eye.
More interesting story with OnePlus. Almost all the way, the company ignored certification. She boasted that she was saving money on pointless certification and that she bought a bucket for tests! But every time she said quietly that bathing is not scary.
And now - in 2020 - OnePlus 8 Pro gets IP68, and at the same time the price rises to 1000 euros. Coincidence? I don’t think so!
By the way, Xiaomi also raised prices, but the certificate was not delivered.
But the funniest thing, you know what?
The certificate applies only to the American version of OnePlus 8, in Europe with protection only the firmware. Do you know why?
And this is a great excuse to move on to how the certificate is obtained. To whom and how much should you pay?
The main regulator here is the International Electrotechnical Commission IEC, whose head office is located in Geneva.
But the Certificates are not issued by the IEC itself, but by the agencies. For example, here is the CSA Group from North Wales. The organization's website says what kind of documents they can issue.
In order to get a certificate of protection, you need to pass the test. And then the bureaucracy begins. The brand provides the device and is tortured.
In fact, the main requirement is a guarantee that serial smartphones will be identical to those presented for the test.
And the tests themselves look pretty hilarious.
So, returning to OnePlus, the trick is that slightly different models come to different markets under different article numbers. And not all of them have tested. But the user is ultimately sure that all have IP68. So how much is the pleasure?
Here the data varies.
In an old interview, Carl Pei from OnePlus said that testing for IP would cost +30 dollars to the price of a smartphone.
How much this procedure costs: not disclosed in open sources.
Somewhere they write about 10-20 thousand turnkey dollars. True, this is for IP65. But rather, the license is paid for each device separately.
But there are two possible ways - testing in factories: for this you need to purchase the necessary equipment and make it regularly calibrated - well, like with water meters.
By the way, here it is on Ali - 7-10 thousand dollars apiece.
The second option is to submit test samples to one of the agencies and then receive a certificate with the possibility of completing the devices!
By the way, another standard of the US Army stands apart. MIL-STD-810. The key difference is that there are still a lot of impact factors to consider. Shaking, freezing, solar radiation, etc. And in fact, smartphones that have received such a protection standard are indestructible, but ... In fact, a device with IP68 will almost certainly pass most of the army standard tests.
But on the other hand, in the specifications it looks like it looks cooler.
Total
The IP certificate does not seem to be too expensive for a large company, but in addition to passing the certificate, you need to do the moisture protection itself.
Why do brands pay for a certificate? To gain the trust of the audience. But at the same time they keep a fig in their pocket, not intending to fix the drowned.
But if the IP is not written, this does not mean that the smartphone is in danger. We need to check what the manufacturer says. Like Xiaomi.