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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/05/apple_patent_water_detection/

Did your iPhone 'just stop working' - or did you drop it in your BEER?

No more lying at the Genius Bar - Apple patents water detection

By Anna Leach

Posted in Security, 5th July 2012 10:16 GMT

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Apple was awarded patents on 21 of its design and engineering applications yesterday - including one for a head-mounted immersive visual display [1].

The other 20 are a little less visionary, but at least one of the patents awarded could have an impact on fanbois who have given their phones an immersive watery experience.

Patent 8,210,032 [2] is designed to help Apple staff determine whether or not a dysfunctional iPhone had in fact been dropped in a pint of beer/the toilet/the swimming pool/etc. Good news for warranty-enforcing Apple store staff, not good news when your boss subsequently rumbles you for ruining a corporate handset.

Apple says in the patent:

Water exposure is among major reasons that may cause significant malfunction of devices [...] Therefore, verification of significant water exposure (or water immersion) is important to manufacturers of the devices. For example, for purposes such as warranty claim assessment, trouble-shooting for repairs, and product development.

The design outlines a water-detecting component that would fit into the case of a gadget and would determine whether – and to what degree – the device had been dunked in water.

It ain't rocket science – it consists of a water reactive material that includes a soluble dye and small hole. From the patent's description the water-detecting module would fit inside the case – somewhere that a Genius Bar operative could reach it, but a fiddling fanboi can't.

To determine whether device 100 has previously been immersed in water, an inspector 170, such as a representative of the manufacture of device 100, may open cover 108 and remove removable module 110 to see whether detector 102 has changed color.

Alternatively a little display hole on the gadget's surface would reflect whether you'd dunked your iPhone in water.

Apple has submitted some pretty weird patents: such as its privacy by cloneware idea [3]. But the rest of this batch are fairly mundane: there's whole patent on new packaging design, another on an iPod stand and others deal with small software tweaks: for example one which allows you to view multiple application windows in a user interface and one which will allow you to listen to certain tracks in a fixed sequence even when playing tracks on random shuffle.

The patent 'Water detection arrangement [4]' was filed on 15 January, 2010 and awarded on 3 July, 2012. ®