Want to take your new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus for a swim?

Unfortunately the bad news is that you’d still kill the phone, but it does appear Apple’s latest smartphones are more water resistant than previous models, at least according to one report.

The folks over at iFixit have pulled apart the new iPhone’s and have discovered that, compared to previous models, the phones have been built with greater water resistance and would seemingly pass a liquid splash test.

Water resistance is said to come via a new mystery adhesive around the display area of the phone that is already secured by screws, suggesting that its main purpose may be water resistance instead:

We had our suspicions, based in part on Apple patent filings in one particular area: waterproofing. Apple has been investigating a waterproof (or, more accurately, liquid proof) iPhone for at least the last several years. If that strip of sticky goop on the 6s wasn’t put there to hold the display in, then maybe—just maybe—it was designed to keep liquids out. Like a gasket!

There are apparently examples of users testing their phones with water and although they don’t come out undamaged from the interaction, they are said to be more resilient to liquids.

The report does note that other parts of the new iPhone’s have not had the treatment, such as the microphone and charger ports, suggesting that the attempt by Apple is more about accidental splash resistance.

Official word

The strangest part about the discovery is that Apple hasn’t said a thing about it; you’d expect the tech giant to promote the additional benefit of water resistance as a selling point of the phone. Then again,  given it’s far from perfect they’ve remained mum about it to avoid any liability issues with people putting it to the test and killing their phones in the process.

Apple does have a number of patents relating to waterproofing phones, and it’s not impossible to implement waterproofing based on current technology, as Sony already does with its Experia range of phones, but Apple may not quite be fully there yet.

Perhaps we’ll see water proofing with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, although I think most users would want the phone to be harder to break when dropped versus water-proofing first.

Image credit: abbilder/Flickr/CC by 2.0