Within a year of the first iPhone sales in June 2007 there were reports about the slick devices going kerplunk, dropped by their owners into toilets while they were answering the call of nature.
It is a problem that Apple presented a solution to with the introduction yesterday of new water-resistant iPhone models, and probably means that painfully humorous stories like the ones told on the MacRumors forum could heretofore be a thing of the past.
“I was sitting on the toilet at work... and then I grabbed my iPhone to continue surfing the web while enjoying my time on the toilet. And wham, dropped my US$400 piece of equipment into the bowl,” a user named Ryan wrote in May 2008. “I immediately reached my hand into the pot and grabbed my precious iPhone.”
He dried the iPhone, turned it off and “practically in tears” removed the SIM card and began to shake water out of its ports.
“Didn’t help all my friends were laughing at me for being so stupid.”
In a remedy surely imitated millions of times in the nearly a decade since - during which Apple has sold some 1 billion iPhones - Ryan left the device in warm places including the top of a computer and in his car in summer weather.
“So word to the wise. DRY your iPhone in a very warm place ASAP,” he advised, “and get ALL the water out of it before you try and do anything else.”
Another forum poster described how he was picking up his cat, when his phone slid from his shirt pocket into the dog’s water bowl.
He placed the device on a floor heating grate, turned up his furnace and let it dry for two days. Function was restored except for a reduction in battery life, the user said.
The end of such mishaps - and the online culture of commiseration - could be at hand with the iPhone 7 models whose redesigned enclosure claims to make the phone resistant to both water and dust.
“Even the least coordinated among us,” said Philip Schiller, senior vice-president of worldwide marketing at Apple, “don’t have to worry - in case some unusual mishap happens - that your iPhone will be safe from water or dust.”
- dpa
