iPhones have been water and dust resistant for a few years, even the models that don’t have official ratings. In fact, iPhones were able to deal with water submersion even better than expected, surpassing Apple’s own estimates — we’ve all seen those stories of iPhones that kept working after being found on the bottom of a lake. Apple has continued to improve its waterproofing technology over the years, and the iPhone 11 phones are even better than their predecessors. According to Apple, both the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pros are water-resistant to double the depth of the iPhone XR, and iPhone XS, respectively. That’s 2 meters (6.56 feet) for the iPhone 11 and 4 meters (13.12 feet) for the iPhone 11 Pro. However, a real-life extreme waterproof test proves that both phones can be submerged even deeper and still work just fine.
Both handsets survived for 30 minutes in salty water at depths of between 4 meters and 12 meters (39.37 feet) in CNET’s test which is a remarkable achievement. The test involved the submersion of both phones with a timer running on the screen. Once the phones were brought back to the surface, the functionality of the screen, camera, and speakers was tested.
The iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro survived with no issues their trips to 4 meters, 8 meters, and 12 meters, which should be enough to put your mind to ease about your latest iPhone 11 water incident.
Even if Apple’s official ratings advise against taking the new phones to depths that are deeper than 2 or 4 meters, you shouldn’t panic if you drop your iPhone 11 in deeper water as long as you can retrieve it in a timely manner. The test didn’t extend beyond 30 minutes at a time, but the two phones did survive more than 90 minutes underwater in these back-to-back tests. Obviously, your mileage might vary and things can still go wrong beyond the recommended depths, so you should still pay attention when you’re near water.
Once dried, CNET inspected the integrity of the phones again, finding that both of them continued to work almost flawlessly. That’s “almost flawlessly” because the screen of one of the two devices was scratched in the process, a problem that obviously has nothing to do with water. Also, the tester said that the speakers were slightly less loud than before. Check out the full video at this link.
