iPhone XR And XS: Water Resistance Test At 30 Meters, Which One Died?

The iPhone XS and XR are made with water resistance feature so that you can keep them in your pockets while swimming without much concern.

Apple claims that the iPhone XR can resist water down to 1 meter in 30 minutes (IP67) while the XS can double the depth in the same time length, 30 minutes at 2 meters deep  (IP68).

But that’s just what the profile said, how about in reality?

The XS used to survive a liquid test before, which involved the phone sunk, spilled on different types of liquids such as ocean’s salt water, hot tea, and wine.

In this recent test, the testers from CNET expand the test limit by taking a new XR and the same XS that survived the aforementioned liquid test to California, Monterey Bay. Both phones were attached to the front of a Trident, which is an OpenROV drone to use underwater. The Trident can dive up to 100 meters deep.

To keep the phones from drifting away, OpenROV helped by making a custom mount with flotations for holding the devices next to each other in front of the cameras. The phones’ screens were set to stay on the timers on before the test started.

Round one: two meters

Thought the iPhone XR is said to resist only 1 meter deep, both phones were taken to the depth of 2 meters. After diving sitting that deep in 5 minutes, testers pulled the phones out of the water and dried them with a microfiber cloth.

In general, the phones were still fine, touch screen functioned well, no water ingress was spotted, no fogging on the lens, buttons worked well. In terms of speakers, as the iphone XS was dunked in water before, the sounds were more muffled compared to the new XR, which sounded perfect.

Round two: three meters

This time, the testers took the two phones down to 3 meters deep for 5 minutes, pulled them up and cleaned them off again.

Once again, both the iPhone XS and XR functioned normally. The testers did not find any water damage on the phones, yet the XS’ speakers still sounded worse than the XR.

Round three: five meters

In the third attempt, the phones were tested just how deeper they can survive. The phones were put down to 5 meters deep for 19 minutes before going up and getting dried off.

Another pass in this round for both phones, they operated well.

Final round: eight meters

Though testers did not soak the phones for 30 minutes, they passed the much greater depth than they were made for. So in the final attempt, they decided to take them 8 meters deep, at Monterey Bay, leaving them there for as long as possible.

At first, things were fine like in the previous dives. However, after about three minutes, the XR displayed a warning about the SIM card, which means something went wrong and that water had sneaked into the SIM tray.

The XR survived for a bit longer but its screen went black at 6 minutes 50 seconds. In contrast, the XS was still going well, staying in the water for 30 minutes sharp.

After getting the devices out of the water, the testers dried them off and did some checkups. They could not turn the XR on when they removed the SIM tray, a lot of water came out from the cavity. Plus, there seemed to be a bulge on the XR’s display. But, we need to remember that the phone was taken down to 8 times the depth it was designed for and it successfully survived the previous rounds, which is surprisingly good.

Yet, the greatest news is that the XS showed no water damage, except for the muffled sounds from the previous test. The testers looked into the SIM tray and the LCI (Liquid Contact Indicator) had not been activated. A week after the test, the XS was still in good function.

You can watch the full water test here.