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iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus teardown reveal changes that make the devices water resistant

So, is the new iPhone 6s waterproof or not? A lot of ink has been spilt following a video that showed an iPhone 6s surviving being submerged in bowls of water for over an hour. People have been wondering whether the poster had used Liquipel to protect their device from water damage or if Apple has in fact done something to improve water resistance of the new iPhones.

The test even got the folks over at iFixit interested and they decided to teardown a few more iPhones to find out the truth.

As it turns out, Apple has increased the size of the lip running around the frame of the new iPhones so as to install a gasket on it. The size of the lip has increased appby only 0.3mm, which might not seem like much, but once you consider how limited space is inside an iPhone, this is a big deal. Apple is pretty serious about this gasket and it is even using color co-ordinated gasket strips depending on the color of the display.

Apple has also updated every logic board connector on the new iPhones and surrounded them with a tiny silicon seal. These tiny seals will play a huge role in the survival of your iPhone when it is accidentally exposed to water. Apple had filed a patent for these waterproof silicon cases back in March this year.

Besides the above, there are no other major changes that Apple have made to seemingly make the new iPhones water resistant. Nonetheless, while the new iPhones are not waterproof, the gasket and the silicon seals will go a long way in saving your new iPhone from any accidental water spill.

Conclusion: both the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are dramatically less prone to liquid damage than their predecessors.
I must admit, I was surprised to learn about the new iPhones’ much higher resistance to water damage. Submerging a pre-iPhone 6s iPhone into a bowl of water was pretty much guaranteed to leave you with a scathed device.

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