How much resistant is an iPhone 7 to water?

Jul 17, 2019

Apparently not much.

Friday afternoon, at work, I was taking several pictures with my iPhone 7, something I do ofter for documentation purposes of the samples we receive. Since it got quite dirty, I rinsed it under the faucet.
As strange as this move might seem, I had strong proofs it could have worked without later issues. For one, I had already done it in the past: last year my iPhone got so overheated, it refused to work displaying the excessive temperature alert. In that occasion, I relied on the water proofness of the 7 to rinse it under cold water and cool it quickly: the phone got back to working in few minutes and had done so perfectly 'til Friday.
Few months later, Apple came out with this video about the iPhone XR and in one of the very last sequences, you can see an XR being rinsed and brushed under the faucet. Even thought the XR is a quite newer phone, that image just reinforced the idea I was storing in my mind: water resistant iPhones can occasionally be rinsed under the faucet.

As it turns out, putting an iPhone under running water is a matter of luck. Maybe, the first time I did it, the seals were brand new - while later they got stiffer with time, letting water pass through. Maybe again, after replacing the battery late last year, the seals were not laid down perfectly leaving even just a small opening for a drop to come in.

The end result was bad. At first the phone stayed on, but some internal components began to behave erratically: the ambient light sensor, the wifi module and even the whole sound system. Once I plugged the headphones in the lightning connector then, the phone crashed definitely and began looping on the startup apple indefinitely.

At this point, I clearly needed a new phone.

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