Here's What The IP Code Can Tell You About Your Smartphone's Water Resistance

Waterproof smartphones are great. Instead of having to sink them into a bowl of rice when you drop them in water, you can just dry them off and carry on. But how exactly do you know your device is ¡°waterproof¡± and not ¡°water-resistant¡±?

Well, there¡¯s the IP Code for that, the Ingress Protection Marking aka International Protection Marking. For instance, when your Samsung Galaxy S& has an IP68 rating you know it¡¯s safest it can get. But what exactly does that mean? Let me break it down for you.

The IP Code is the degree of protection a device¡¯s enclosure provides against dust, impact, and water. When the code is listed, it¡¯s always written as the letters ¡®IP¡¯ followed by two digits. While impact resistance used to also be displayed as a third digit in the code, it¡¯s now part of a separate scale.

The first digit in the IP Code is talking about solid ingress, basically what kind of solid matter can get into your device. This goes all the way from 0 to 6. With a rating 2, your fingers can still fit into the device, and at 6 the device is airtight from dust. Most smartphones are either a 5 or 6 on this scale. With a dust-resistant rating of 5, dropping your phone in the sand won¡¯t stop it working but you may have some dust enter underneath the display covering that¡¯ll be annoying.

The second digit to consider, and arguably more prominent, is the liquid ingress rating, or how water-resistant your smartphone is. This scale goes all the way from 0 to 8, with the additional markings for 6K and 9K. However, no consumer smartphones are rated for either 6K or 9K, because both involve pressurized jets of water and not immersion.

At rating 3 or 4 here, your smartphone will shrug off small splashes, though you need to ensure they¡¯re properly dried off after. At 6, it¡¯ll hold up against powerful water jets from various angles. After this point however, the IP rating for liquids is not cumulative. That means if your device is rated IPX7 or IPX8, which test immersing a device in water up to a metre, it won¡¯t necessarily guarantee it against the water sprays withstood by an IPX6 device. That means an IPX7 device should be fine falling into a pool, but could be badly messed up by a hose. A device protected against both would likely be marked something like IPX6/IPX7

Now that we¡¯ve covered each digit, what about how it¡¯s written? Well, ideally, a dust-proof, water-resistant smartphone would get a rating like IP67. However, a lot of times you¡¯ll instead see an ¡®X¡¯ in there instead, like in IPX7 and IPX8. Don¡¯t worry, this doesn¡¯t mean your device can¡¯t stop any dust entering in. It just means it hasn¡¯t been tested against that element. And where consumer smartphones and similar products are concerned, they¡¯re likely dust-proof anyway.

You can take a look at the entire IP code here.