This is the story of how I ended up with a $1,800 iPhone X. Before you get mad at the title, hear me out, and let my situation be a warning to you if you think the iPhone X is actually water resistant.
The iPhone X: http://jer.fyi/iphonex
Top 5 Slim iPhone X Cases: http://jer.fyi/top5iphonexslimcases
Video Transcription:
Hey, what’s up? It’s Jerad with State of Tech and I wanted to talk to you about my $1,800 iPhone X. Now, my phone is $1,800 or is worth now $1,800 because I had to buy a new one. Now let me tell you a little bit about why that happened. So the iPhone X is IP67 certified, which means it is water and dust and erosion resistant and then there are certain specifications for that.
Now there’s a range of certification that has to be in place for it to get that IP67 certification and the iPhone X has that. They advertise it on their website in its own row on the website, so they draw a lot of attention to it. Of course, there are phones out there like the Samsung Galaxy phones that they advertise underwater. I mean they even showcase it being used underwater. However, I have seen some ads and I’ve seen some things where the iPhone, they’re kind of showcasing that they’re phone can kind of do it too.
But the iPhone should not ever be put underwater. It should not even by put near water, and I’m going to tell you exactly what happened to my phone so that it’s a lesson to all of you who may be thinking about using their iPhones as some form of an underwater camera. So the iPhone X is I believe the second phone or the third phone to get a water certification or water resistant certification.
The iPhone 7 was the first one to get it. The iPhone 8 has one and then the iPhone X, of course, has one. Before that, we all knew not to get our iPhones anywhere near water. Now I did believe that Apple would be able to produce that they were capable of producing something that could go underwater. We all know that the new Apple Watch is supposed to be, you’re supposed to be able to swim in it.
It has a mode to track your swimming. You should be able to swim in the water with your Apple Watch. They advertise that as being something that you can do. Of course, the Apple Watch is IP68 certified so it does have a better certification than the iPhone X’s IP67 certification. So I took this phone in the water because I was wanting to do an underwater camera comparison between the iPhone X and the S9 Plus.
I’ve seen countless other people put their iPhones underwater. I’ve put another iPhone X that I had before this one underwater and had no problems, no issues at all. The phone worked well. It didn’t have any issues after taking it out of the water. However, with this phone immediately after putting it in the water and taking it out really only for a couple of seconds just to take a quick photo, I was met with a notification on the screen saying that the SIM card had been removed.
Now I knew that that wasn’t the case and I thought oh, something’s wrong, so I took the phone out, got out, dried it off. The phone’s screen started turning green and doing all these weird flickery things. I tried powering the phone down but the iPhone is impossible to shut down. It’s impossible to shut down under normal circumstances, let alone when the phone is constantly trying to restart and reboot and the screen is going weird and everything’s happening and you’re freaking out because your iPhone is going sideways on you.
All I could do is just watch my phone die a slow painful death. There was nothing that I could do. I’d try and hold down the side button, I mean the volume up button to get it to that screen where I can power it down, but the phone would reboot or something would happen, the screen would turn off and on and it would interrupt that process, so the phone was basically designed to kill itself and that’s what’s happening because there’s no way to turn the phone off.
So with some water inside of the phone, because the SIM door I believe was defective, or the seal that was around that was defective, the phone basically died and I tried putting it on rice. I tried doing all those things. There was nothing that I could do to get the phone to come back. So I took it down to the Apple Store and the Apple Store basically told me any water damage and you’re screwed. There’s nothing that we’re going to do for you.
It doesn’t matter what type of water damage if it tripped the little water sensor that’s in there and it shows red, I’m showing you a picture of what that looks like now, your phone is basically worthless and it’s garbage and sorry about your luck. Nevermind the fact that the phone is IP67 water resistant and it should withstand that type of use. You should be able to take your phone and put it underwater a couple of inches and then take some pictures and pull the phone out and have it be fine, but that’s not the case with the iPhone X.
And I don’t recommend it because Apple is not going to back you up and they’re not going to help you out in situations like that. The Apple Store employee told me that there’s no way of them knowing what the exposure was like underwater, which is a good argument. I understand that there’s no way, that they’d have to take my word for it that I was using the phone exactly how I was using it and the issue happened.
There’s no way. My phone could have been underwater for three days for all they know, so there’s something to be said there. But for them not to back up the fact that their phone is IP67 water resistant and to trust their customer at least to a certain extent is just flat out crazy. They didn’t even care to look at the SIM door or really even to look and examine the phone. The fact is is that there was water damage to it and there’s nothing that they can do.
If you look at their website the policy says water damage on the phone, it’s out of warranty, there’s nothing that we’re going to do. However, they advertise an IP67 certification on the phone, which is really frustrating to me that they are not backing a product that is supposed to have a certain standard. Now, if I was to listen to music for a month straight at full volume running my phone 24 hours a day and after a month the speakers went out, I would expect that my speakers should be able to be replaced.
Even though that’s an extreme situation, under the warranty if the speakers go out they’re going to replace the speakers. But if you use the phone in a way that it’s described to be able to be used by a certain standard that the phone has passed, they’re not going to back that. So what happened was is they did give me an option to purchase a new phone. Basically, it’s just the phone only. You don’t get a new box. You don’t get new headphones, cables or any of that stuff. They’ll sell you a new phone for $550 and then, of course, I had to pay tax on that.
So $600 later I have a new iPhone or kind of a new iPhone. I mean they say it’s brand new. I’ll have to believe them on that. But I did also have to give them my old iPhone. So they’re going to take my old iPhone and send it back. They’re going to fix whatever went wrong and then they’re going to use that as a refurbished phone to sell to somebody else. So I think that Apple needs to really be careful because a situation like this leads to class action lawsuits where they’re not supporting something that they say their phone can do.
By listing that their phone has an IP67 certification it states that the phone can be used under those circumstances and then if the phone is used under those circumstances, yet it still manages to get damaged, then they’re not going to even try to honor what the phone is supposed to be able to withstand. That’s kind of a bummer to me.
As being a person who has bought every single version of the iPhone since the first one, sometimes even more than once have I bought the same version of the iPhone, I’ve been a big Apple fan for years even though there are things that I don’t like about their ecosystem or their platform and I bounce back and forth all the time between Android and other platforms, I’ve always been a fan of Apple, but right now I’m understanding that they really just don’t care about their customers.
As a person who has a business account with Apple and I make business purchases, I also make personal purchases from Apple, I’ve spent a ton of money with Apple over the years and just one situation like this they’re going to go ahead and say, “Nope. Sorry about your luck. We’re not even going to hear you out. We’re not even going to look into the phone maybe a little bit to see if maybe there was some sort of a situation there.”
There’s nothing in place for Apple to do that. Apple at the Apple Stores has nothing that they can do to open up a phone and look through those, look through the phone and try to determine exactly what happened there. The policy is if there’s water damage if the little notification thing on the inside of the phone tripped, you’re out of luck. You’re going to have to purchase a new phone and oh by the way, we’ll take your old phone so that we can fix it and sell it again.
It’s a really frustrating process, and as a consumer, I’m not very happy about it. So this video I hope will act as kind of a PSA to all of you out there who are thinking about getting your phone wet for the sake of taking pictures or something like that. I highly recommend that you don’t do it. I also recommend that you don’t take your Apple Watch in the water simply because Apple is not going to back you up.
If you dive into the water with your Apple Watch on and the pressure pushes a little bit of water inside the casing, you’re not going to get a new Apple Watch out of it. You’re going to end up having to purchase a new Apple Watch. At a phone that cost over $1,000 and a watch that most of them cost over $500, that’s just too much money to risk taking them into the water and getting them wet. There are many other devices out there by manufacturers that back their products like Samsung and FitBit.
You know, these other manufacturers test and make sure their products are going to work in those environments. It really bums me out that Apple is not doing that with their own products, so for me, I’m just a little frustrated and hence why I made this video for all of you. Let me know what you think down in the comments section below.
I don’t want this to turn into we hate Apple, let’s bash Apple situation, but it is an instance where one of the most profitable companies in the world is not taking care of their customers in a situation like this, so let’s talk about that down in the comments section below. Share your thoughts, share your opinions. If you’ve had a situation like this I’d love to hear about it too, so click on subscribe or follow. I’d love to have you along for future videos. Take care and we’ll see you back here next time on State of Tech.
