A growing trend in the flagship smartphone arena is to offer water resistant or even waterproof devices. Sony has been doing it since early 2013 with the Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z and other manufacturers are increasingly following suite. The latest is Samsung which announced the IP67-certified Galaxy S5 last month at Mobile World Congress.
A report by Korea’s IT Today indicates that more upcoming devices will also be dust and waterproof. Among them are the LG G3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Pantech could also jump on the bandwagon with the launch of the Vega Iron 2.
In the case of Samsung at least, it appears that the company will use the same Liquid Silicon Moulding technology that it did on the Galaxy S5 to better protect the Galaxy Note 4.
The move is likely to sign the death knell for the Samsung Active line of devices. For example, last year it had released the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, a more rugged version that was IP67 certified.
IP stands for Ingress Protection. The 67 rating means that it is “dust tight” and able to withstand immersion in water up to one meter deep for 30 minutes.
While taking your IP67-rated smartphone into the shower with you is probably still not advisable, it is nonetheless useful to know that more of our devices are protected against accidental spills, being caught in the rain, or being thrown in a snowbank accidentally (as I did with my Google Nexus 5 just a couple of days ago).
On a side note, the report also suggests that the LG G3 will launch in Korea in May.