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New Sony Waterproof Phone Makes a Splash

If you have ever dropped your mobile phone in water, then the chances are that it died immediately. Virgin mobile phones are particularly vulnerable to water immersion; all of that electrical power immediately short circuits and fries the phone’s components causing irreparable damage.

Immediate experience of this includes dropping a phone in a puddle of rain water, dropping a phone down the toilet, and dropping a phone in a glass of beer. Interestingly all but the last one of these resulted in immediate and permanent death, though rapid action was able to save the handset (a Nokia) that fell into a pint glass of Cornish beer (Doom Bar).

The handset was carefully dried out afterwards for a couple of days before being powered up again. Once it was, most of the phones functions were restored, that is apart from the keyboard. Fortunately a work colleague of the owner, a skilled electronics engineer, was able to fit it with a new one (though he should have been working on the electronics of a Formula One car at the time, but we will keep that one quiet). 

Now we can consign all that to the past as Sony has invented the waterproof mobile phone.  The phone is called the Xperia Z and it can survive being submerged water to the depth of one meter for up to 30 minutes without suffering any damage.

This really is what we have all been waiting for; a phone that you can use in the shower, or in the bath, the swimming pool, and even in the sea. Launched at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2013, the phone is called the Xperia Z and has a five inch 1080p HD display. It is also startlingly fast as it has a quad core processor.

Furthermore, it is equipped with an impressive 13 megapixel camera which can shoot HD video, opening up the possibilities of some great underwater cinematography.  Although it might be a little difficult to make calls underwater (have you ever tried to talk underwater?) texting should be possible, but to what depth Sony has not yet revealed.

This handset, which made a splash when it was launched at CES, is available through mobile phone contracts (http://www.virginmobile.com/vm/payMonthlyPhones.do). It has 4G connectivity and includes a battery life extending app which can increase battery life by up to four times. The app works by shutting down phone functions when they are not required and restarting them when they are; as it is Android based it should soon be available for other Virgin mobile phones before too long.