over the weekend we began hearing people
talk about how surprisingly
water-resistant the new iPhone 6s and 6s
Plus really are we've seen some videos
showing the iPhone 6s surviving under
water for up to 30 minutes but the big
question on our mind is why didn't Apple
advertise the new iPhones as being
water-resistant and how did they manage
to make it that way our first clue that
something was up was the discovery that
the 6s and 6s plus now had adhesive
strips securing the front panel since
the panel was already held in place with
screws why the additional adhesive well
we had our suspicions this might be due
to waterproofing it was just a theory
until those YouTube videos began popping
up and that's when we started to get
really curious breaking out our teardown
tools we set to work on finding where
Apple was hiding their water-resistant
secrets our first discovery was Apple
takes this gasket business pretty
seriously
it seems the iPhones frame has been
subtly reworked to accommodate the new
gasket there was a slight but measurable
increase in the width of the lip running
along the perimeter of the frame it's
only a third of a millimeter but with
the tight tolerance inside the iPhone 6s
it's enough to make a difference the
biggest surprise we found was on the
logic board every cable connector on the
board is surrounded by what appears to
be a tiny silicone seal Apple actually
filed a patent for a waterproof silicone
seal onboard tube or connectors just
this past March and it appears they have
rapidly put it to use interestingly the
second part of the patent concerns a
hydrophobic conformal coating for
printed circuit boards we were unable to
confirm whether it's there for the
moment but we'll definitely update the
post on our site as soon as we find out
the buttons of the iPhone 6s are
surprisingly not that different from the
iPhone 6 we noted in our teardown that
the power and volume buttons underwent a
minor redesign but that doesn't seem to
indicate a major change in strategy to
repel liquids we weren't able to find
any obvious signs of waterproofing in
the speaker or headphone jack the
speaker has a slightly finer mesh weave
than the iPhone 6s but it doesn't appear
to repel water any better than last
year's iPhone all in all the
improvements in water resistance in the
iPhone 6s are an exciting step forward
for the iPhone line more water
resistance means less liquid damage and
that's a good thing in our eyes if you
haven't seen our tear downs already make
sure you check them out at ifixit.com
or
right here on our Channel