iPhone 7: are you miffed that Apple’s scrapped the headphone socket?

No, Duncan. Apple uses AAC encoding, widely considered superior to MP3. And yes – we never use the iPhone for listening, but we have three iPods and the music quality is outstanding when routed through a decent amp and speaker combination. But Derek P’s point is well taken. Apple does make excellent stuff, but prices according to what the market will bear, and not what the product is worth.

Interestingly, although I own possibly more Apple equipment than most, the only issue I’ve found with their products has been the headphone socket. The small socket has always been prone to failure and on the computers I routinely disengage it and use the USB port instead.

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The Which article says that too.

I don’t know if the adaptor will let you use headphones when data and/or charging functions are also in use. Also, I presume that, if you lose or break your adaptor, you’ll only be able to buy replacements at “Apple approved” prices.

The folk I feel sorry for are those who really struggle to afford Apple kit, but end up succumbing to peer pressure and buying it anyway. Christmas is coming – I expect quite a lot of children will be asking to be given iPhones, leaving their parents to foot the bill.

Simple precautions to prevent the movement of liquids through simple round holes, like headphone sockets, must be much easier to design and produce that sealing arrangements for rectangular ones like USB and (wallet) Lightening connectors.

The two cheap digital cameras lying here by my PC both have soft rubber covers over all of their external ports.

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You can’t be looking in the right places, as the Register reported this on 24th August:

“Apple’s swanky iPhones can suffer chip failures that can render the touchscreen unusable.

This according to a report from DIY repair site iFixit, which says two controller chips on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus logic board can lose their electrical contacts, and when they go, the handset’s touchscreen no longer works.

The issue commonly begins with gray bars appearing on the screen or touch features not working occasionally. Because of this, iFixit says, the problem can incorrectly be attributed to a faulty touchscreen.

In reality, however, the issue is caused by failures in the U2402 “Meson” and U2401 “Cumulus” chips, both of which are soldered onto the main board and act as controllers to handle the touch features on Apple’s smartphone.”

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The Register is penned by engineers, Duncan, and is an extremely reliable source of Tech information. The Register report has also been confirmed by an Apple ‘insider’ and I anticipate that Apple will be offering a replacement service for all iPhone 6 owners in the near future. They may well replace it with the 6S, since that has a different design and is not affected in the same way.

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“Water resistant” will have defined limitations attached to it. For example the depth to which it can be immersed without leaking. Clearly as the water pressure increases with depth there will be a practical limit imposed by the sealing design. Just like your water resistant watch.

“Water proof” implies total resistance to the ingress of water.

The phone carries an IP (Ingress Protection) rating “iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are splash, water and dust resistant, and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions with a rating of IP67 under IEC standard 60529. Splash, water and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions. Liquid damage not covered under warranty.”

IPX7 means the phone can be immersed at a depth of 1m without harmful ingress of water.

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But note that “liquid damage is not covered under warranty”. Presumably you would have to prove that you did not take it below 1m while swimming? However, if you could prove that it leaked in less than 1m immersion then I doubt this guarantee condition would be legally enforceable. You could immerse it in strongly-coloured water with a witness perhaps, to demonstrate whether it performed or not. I see no point in advertising a particular feature but then not standing by it should it fail to meet the stated claim.

Is that just a case of the manufacturers protecting themselves if the battery explodes or catches fire and one puts the device in the sink and runs the tap on it? I cannot understand why anyone should expect a highly sophisticated electronic device reliant on pure conductivity to survive under water or even be useable at all when it’s wet. If you give someone a mobile phone be sure to give them an umbrella with it. An umbrella with a mobile phone built into the handle will no doubt evolve in time [I can visualise it now in Private Eye‘s Christmas ideas catalogue: ” . . . plays the main song from Singin’ in the Rain“]. I guess Which?’s Weekly Scoop would fall for it.

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Apparently the Samsung Galaxy S7 also excludes liquid damage from the warranty cover. It would be useful if the manufacturers gave an explanation but my guess is that they have no idea of what the phone has been subjected to, bearing in mind that phones go everywhere and get dropped and subjected to other abuse.

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