A newly discovered Apple patent application describes a system that would make it easier for Apple Store employees to diagnose water damage in your phone so that they can deny you a replacement.
AppleInsider spotted “Mechanisms for Detecting Exposure to Water in an Electronic Device”. The patent describes a circuit-based system for detecting water damage that would replace the chemical sensors currently used in Apple products.
Apple doesn’t trust you — that’s why the company installs those little water damage detectors in the first place. The new patent application, though, reveals that Apple doesn’t trust its employees either. According to Apple, many of its workers don’t have the skills necessary to inspect your gadget to make sure that it’s actually faulty and that you didn’t just drop it in the toilet. According to the patent:
Often, particularly at a point of sale, personnel receiving the returned device may be unqualified or untrained to determine whether or not a device has failed due to manufacturing defects or due to consumer abuse. Thus, personnel at the point of sale may often times exchange the returned product with a working replacement product regardless of the cause of failure in order to avoid potential conflicts with the customer. As a result, it is not uncommon for consumers to receive replacement products or repair services on abused products not covered under the terms of a warranty. Such erroneous replacements or repairs may be costly to the vendor and/or manufacturer of the product.
Apparently, both the liquid damage indicators in Apple products and the company’s employees simply aren’t reliable enough to determine your iPhone’s cause of death. [Free Patents Online via AppleInsider]
Noddy
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:22 AMBloody hell,.. why do the fanboys keep supporting Apple? You would have thought by now, what with their draconian rules of use, the proprietary ports and leads and the evil horned beast that is their management would have made them think about it by now?
John
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:18 PMYou’ve obviously never used (for an extended period) Apple products or your such a “tinkerer” that you don’t mind when your devices don’t work together properly… not saying it’s right or wrong, but I’ve been on both sides of the fence and permit all to make their own judgement. Don’t like the Apple model, don’t buy the products
Noddy
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:58 PMMy comment has nothing to do with how the product works! Read the post again, its about the way they run their business that pisses me off, not the product! Apple do in fact build excellent hardware but I won’t be purchasing it any time soon. They will become a monopoly if they keep suing the ass of everything that has a current running through it!
Blake Thomson
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 5:02 PMYes but you see completely ignorant that apple has a no questions warranty replacement service.
My phone went through the washing machine, and I told them as much, they tried to boot it up and said, it sure is stuffed isn’t it? Then gave me a new one.
Please try and do that with any other phone that has been broken due to the user.
Mr Odd
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 9:02 PMMy brother works at Apple, his job is to replace iPhones. You should hear some stories about what some people try to scam out of Apple. Pretty much Apple wants to be nice, but some people are trying to scam the system. He had someone bring in an iPhone they had pulled apart (like removed every screw) and wanted to Apple to fix for free. How’s it’s Apple fault if you break your own phone?
Peter C.
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 12:34 AMUm, I’m sorry but I find this very hard to believe.
Wodger
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:26 AM+1 to that
Rossco
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:28 AMWhy don’t they just make the phones waterproof and be done with it?
Noddy
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:33 AMYou’re missing the point! They build them this way to have more control over everything! their staff their customers, everything. It’s micro management gone mad!
Drew
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:45 AMSo they can make you buy a new phone when you get a drop of rain on your old one? Duuhhh
Beaugus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:45 AMI’ve been using Apple products for quite a long time now (since around 1996-97) and have usually always been at the forefront of Apple’s newest hardware but more recently stepping back and looking at how Apple as a company have grown its small wonder how they’ve managed to turn what used to be the professionals grade choice into the everybody’s consumer choice over the last 10 years.
What Apple essentially have managed to do is farm in a heap of normal everyday people like myself and subject them to the belief that buying their products makes them a step ahead of what Apple call the competition by giving you a product that you believe you’ll be happy with because its no doubt Apple’s products are beautiful if not drop-dead desirable, but its that method of thinking that has created the fan-boy/girl thing and that constant need to want the next thing in line is what Apple banks on and has now built its entire business on as well.
It’s much like the upcoming iPad 3, you can go on Apple’s website or even retail store today and they’ll still sell you the iPad 2 like its the second coming of all technology marvels and give another 30 or so days, iPad 3 with obviously better spec hardware will debut, Apple will tell you why its better than anything they’ve created before, reaffirm the millions of previous gen hardware that their purchases weren’t in vein but this new product essentially craps over your recent purchase in every way and the features that COULD of easily been made available to the masses (I’ll use Siri for the example, even I myself proved it had no issue running on the normal iPhone 4) and yet they’ll use that to drive sales of the newest product all whilst everyone is either complaining that Apple is this giant contributor to the working conditions of their supplier’s factories but honestly half the Apple user base would never question where or under what circumstance that beautiful new product you’re opening out of the box was created under so essentially nobody cares because they think they got what they want.
If i recall on a comment Tim Cook made about the possibility of moving production to the United States costing the end user $60+ per unit more on either the manufacturing of the iPad or iPhone (I can’t remember which he was referring to) – Apple’s cashed up more than the U.S gov so why isn’t their an industry tax made to actually provide more decent conditions for the actual people making these products and Apple them selves should be taxed per the millions of device they make since they love to brag about user base and finical quarterly results so much.
Personally, I was quite happy using Apple products for years because they are just simply nice products, sure I was happy to buy most of them day 1, I’ve got my use out of them and no real complaints but I can’t help but see and hear of the no other better way of putting it – brainwashing Apple’s product do to people, even when I walked into a local town school here they’res iMac’s and Macbook’s for the students (some of which were of real bad condition) and I think to myself, these are expensive products and the problem is two-fold – the kids have little to zero respect for the cost of these things and secondly they’re using products which anyone would comfortably continuing using because they’re using them at such an early age.
Maybe I’m just getting too old…and yet I’m only 25 and feeling this way.
KzD
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:57 AMI read the first 2 sentences. Scrolled down….THEN BAM WALL OF F*IN TEXT!
Jester
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:08 PMInteresting enough post, but mate, learn to use full stops!! Every paragraph there is one sentence!
Christopher
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:08 PMHoly ape shit batman you’re right, THIS GUYYYYYY
Jack
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:51 AMThere have been cases where phones were denied replacement/repair because they had been in contact with water, and they did this by looking at the litmus indicator (don’t know if that is right term). The problem with that method is, the litmus indicator would change colors even if you are not in contact with water, all it needs sometimes is just some moisture in the air. This is a common practice amongst all mobile phone makers.
This patent makes me think that they are using a new method (hopefully an accurate one) to find out if your phone has truly been in contact with water.
Just my 2 cents.
p.s. My roomies 3 day old HTC Sensation XL has been denied a replacement because it “had been in contact with water”, which is a little surprising given that his phone didn’t leave his room at all.
miguel sanchez
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:12 PMprobably has a toilet in his room.
ian
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:54 AMthey should stop with this and put something that can distinguish if you dropped it in the loo or just went for a jog and sweated a bit.
woontosim
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 11:58 AMI think this is a fantastic idea. I work in retail and customer returns are the bane of my existence, for the same reason – sometimes we can’t tell how the product has been damaged, be it manufacturers defect or customer abuse. So quite often, as stated in the article – “personnel at the point of sale may often times exchange the returned product with a working replacement product regardless of the cause of failure in order to avoid potential conflicts with the customer.” This is VERY expensive for the company. This is not Apple being “Draconian”, it is Apple putting in place an easy way to tell if they have made the product wrong, or if a customer has damaged it themselves. If you drop your phone in water – you don’t have a warranty people! Why argue the point? Customers, quite simply, are stupid.
Ozoneocean
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:00 PMAnd what happens when this idiotic system is affected by moisture in the air over a long period, or sweat or condensation etc? It will happen eventually. Then your device will develop a fault and they won’t fix it because they can point to their silly trap that’s been wrongly tripped.
Like Rossco says, instead of punishing ordinary consumers they should be making their devices better. What about all those new phones that are now protected inside and out with moisture resistant coating?
Graeme
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:19 PM“And what happens when this idiotic system is affected by moisture in the air over a long period, or sweat or condensation etc? It will happen eventually.”
The problem with the method they currently use is the material is slightly hygroscopic, so it will, over time, absorb enough moisture from the air to change colour. It may be that the conductive glue used in this method is far less likely to produce a false positive, so rather than Apple using this to shaft people, perhaps they’re improving matters? (I know, not the most likely option, but who can say given the information provided?)
Corteks
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:18 PMAll mobile phone manufacturers wanna detect liquid damage because no matter where that damage has come (dropped it in the pool or just from unfortunately high humidity or sweat or whatever) from it can cause ongoing problems that are impossible to predict.
Maybe it’s easy to see that your charging connector is corroded but the rest of your phone looks fine. If they replace that connector they’ve given you a guarantee it’ll work after that, but really they have no idea how bad the liquid damage is. There could be corrosion wedged right in the PCB that’s bloody hard (or impossible) to detect and so the only possible fix is to replace the device, but now that they quoted you to replace the charging connector and fixed that they are then obligated to follow the process through. Eventually you’d get a new phone and they’d lose out massively. That’s why companies wanna know if liquid damage has occured so badly. You may think it’s shitty cause in some cases it can happen easily, but it’s there to prevent people going all “Oh LoLz I jumped in a pool without thinking but it’s fine cause I’ll get a new phone for free now!” Or “it’s raining but screw it I’ll just answer my phone and if it screws up I’ll get a new one!”
Honestly I’m pretty anti-apple but they aint doing anything wrong here. In fact as some people have said if they can determine liquid damage more accurately and quicker thanks to this it’s probably a win for everyone.
Jack
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:05 PM+1
ace leo ace
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:23 PMThis is RIDICULOUS!!!
If I choose to buy an expensive piece of electronics, choose not to protect it, choose to put it in a risky situation then get it so wet that it no longer works due to my own carelessness then Apple should replace it because they have lots of money.
Apple are SOOO Draconian!!! They won’t even allow me to indiscriminately immerse my electronics in water and then get a replacement for nothing! All I want to do is live my life but Apple just won’t let me live!!
This is the last straw! If anyone wants all of my mac stuff for nothing just pm me, I am moving to droid cos they are like totally open source and give everything away for free which is like totally how the world should be.
Joel
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:59 PMDammit, I can’t find the pm button..
Andrew
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 1:48 PMI wonder if this gel they use could actually be corroded by heavy humidity over the lifecycle of the product?
K
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 2:10 PMWhether it is intentionally water damaged or not, companies should replace the products as a matter of customer service. Build a good reputation on customer service and it will convince more people to be customers. Consumers do not only look at products nowadays…. but the after sales service. All the best performing companies have great customer service reputations.
Michael
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:42 PMWould love to come to your place of business and demand free replacements for goods that broke completely through fault of my own, i.e. liquid contact on electronics.
Esophagus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:11 PMIf wishes were fishes…
mrjezza
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:00 PMdrive car at 200kmh down suburban road, wrap it around tree and write it off, return to holden/ford (clearly it was bogan), receive replacement car for free.
i see no flaw in this business plan…
Matt L
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:02 PMHere’s an better, win win solution Apple… Make the phone waterproof.
Also to note, this actually looks more like it has to do with tamper detecting screws… No way you’d be able to open it without apple knowing.
Adam C
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 4:45 PMDon’t let logic get in the way of the bottom line.
Martin
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 3:56 PMI just got back from the Apple Store, I own a 64gb Iphone 4s, was having battery issues, so I took it to get checked out, 20 minutes later I have a brand new phone. Very impressed.
Michael
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:46 PMhey i just dropped my galaxy nexus in water, where can i go to replace it and how much is it?
Esophagus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:10 PMPlease, Apple are doing this to fuck with the competition, that’s how they use patents. Other manufacturers have thinner margins and can’t afford to replace every retards moist phone.
Mr Odd
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 9:12 PMI think it’s funny how people give Apple a hard time. I work for one of the other big computer markers. Apple have their own stores with easy to support. With my company, like most of the others, you have to take to service centre to get it repaired. Which aren’t in shopping centres, and there’s only one in the whole city.
Esophagus
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:07 PMThere’s only one Apple store in Perth, you have Next Byte, but apparently they’re bad to deal with. They can only afford to be so flippant because they rip off their customers.
hmmm
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:44 AMYou know your phone shouldn’t get wet. If it does, Apple has every right to deny warranty coverage. Who cares how they find out about it? You got it wet, you pay for your service. At least this method sounds more reliable then the current LCIs.