The iPhone SE has been tested alongside the iPhone 5s and 6s for water durability. The result? Both the SE and 6s lasted about a full hour completely submerged (with a short gap in the middle), with absolutely no noticeable damage at the end.
The iPhone 5s didn’t do quite so well.
The 15-minute video, created and posted by YouTuber Zach Straley, is pretty straight forward. He sets the stopwatch on each device and places them in a container of water. Spoilers below.
The 5s conks out completely around 5 minutes in, but had been struggling for a while before that.
At half an hour, the SE looks like it's had it, and Zach pulls both phones out to test how they had fared. It seems at this point that the 6s had mostly survived with only its headphone jack as a casualty. The SE was obviously fine, unless we'd done some serious fibbing in the article title.
At the end of an hour, the 6s’ headphone jack had miraculously recovered, and the SE could have passed for a phone that had never encountered a light mist, let-alone an hour’s worth of skinny dipping.
It’s surprising that, with water durability like this, Apple isn’t making more of a fuss. The Cupertino company has never been a fan of “quietly brilliant”, but perhaps word of mouth leads to fewer customer returns than a guarantee in this case.
Either way, it looks like your SE and 6s can stand a decent dunking, although don’t try this at home. There is no way this kind of thing is covered by your warranty.
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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