Welcome to our blog, where you can keep up-to-date with the latest P2i news and developments. We will post articles regarding news, events we attend, speaker presentations as well as explaining the nanotechnology industry.
With 61 per cent of us using our phones in the bathroom, it
is just as well that P2i has developed Dunkable™ - a hydrophobic barrier
technology which protects smartphones and tablets from accidental prolonged
water exposure.
The technology has come just in time as a new survey* from
P2i, world leader in liquid repellent nano-coating technology, shows that more
people are taking their smartphones out and about into potentially water hazardous
environments.
Over 70 per cent admitted to taking their phone in the rain,
while the number of people with their phones out in pubs or cafés increased 19
percentage points; from 67 per cent in 2012 to 86 per cent in 2013. Not
surprisingly, 43 per cent had accidently water damaged their phone.
P2i is already protecting tens of millions of devices with
its splash-proof nano-coating for brands including Motorola and Alcatel One
Touch, and is working with pioneering partners to commercialise the Dunkable™
process.
* The research for P2i was
carried out by Opinion Matters between: 24 / 04 / 2013 and 03 / 05 / 2013, from
a sample of 3786 mobile phone users 18+ across the UK, France, Germany, Spain
and the US.
If you've ever dropped your phone in water, don't feel ashamed, you're not
alone.
A recent survey by P2i (details coming out in a press release soon)
showed that 43 per cent of us have suffered from accidental water damage.
We
asked people in the UK to tell us the story of how they managed this feat, and created
a countdown of our ten favorite responses:
10. Was on a water ride at a theme park
9. I accidently left it outside then it rained
8. It dropped into a puddle as I got out of my car
7. Opening a new bottle of cider caused it to fountain over
everything on the table
6. I knocked a jar of gherkins over it, death by
vinegar!
5. Dropped it into the kitchen sink full of washing up
4. While I was washing my hair the mobile started ringing
and I put it to my ear and water got in it.
3. I was trying to make it up to my wife for upsetting her
so I said I would wash our windows. Out came the bucket of warm water and as I bent
over to get the cloth… plop out of my top pocket, my phone fell in the water. To
top it off my wife was still mad with me.
2. Packing for a camping trip, I packed some eggs. Long
story short; the carton got squashed and liquid egg filled my bag, including
the pocket holding my phone.
1. Thinking it was a biscuit, I dunked it into a cup of tea.
Think you have an even better story to tell? Tweet us @P2iLabs or comment on
Facebook at /p2itechnology
The recent WIRED article regarding the confusion over indicator
strips turning pink in humidity has me wondering what we mean by the term
“water damage”. Am I putting my phone in danger from water damage when I use it
in the bathroom to play the radio while I take a shower? Was it ultimately my
own sweat that killed my MP3 player when I used to tuck it into my bra at the
gym? And will my e-reader fall prey to the same faults if I keep using it in
the kitchen, holding it in one hand whilst stirring the pot of steaming pasta
with the other?
We learnt in the recent article, Why does a wet phone die? that electricity in the presence of water can cause electrochemical migration and
permanent short circuiting of devices. But surely a bit of steam or sweat is a
different matter, even if it is enough to turn an indicator strip pink? Another
question for the gang in the P2i Labs, I think.
Can sweat and
humidity really cause damage to electronic devices?
When P2i first emerged into the electronics sector, it was
on hearing aid devices. These are very expensive, small, pieces of electronics
that live behind the ear. A big issue in the hearing aid industry is corrosion
damage, as the close proximity to the skin allows for the transferal of sweat
and adds to the humidity and amount of moisture in the air around the device.
This causes the metals inside the device to have a chemical reaction and begin
to oxidize leading to the gradual degradation of the materials. P2i’s
nano-coating dramatically reduces this corrosion damage and in just three years
P2i went from coating zero to about 60% of the hearing devices produced
globally.
How do you know
what’s causing the damage?
One of the tests we did with the hearing devices, which we
are also doing on smartphones, is known as an ‘accelerated corrosion test’. The
idea is that over a period of days, we can mimic what a device is exposed to
over its lifetime. The test allows us to introduce phases of increased salt or
moisture, followed by dryer times, all the while increasing and decreasing the
temperature; again mimicking the phases a device will go through in the real
world. The aim of the test is to see how the materials in the phone will “weather”
the conditions.
The video below shows the difference between a phone treated
with the splash-proof (previously known as Aridion™) nano-coating, compared to
an untreated device. The phones are going through the exact same test, and are
periodically removed and photographed.
What tends to happen is that as the temperature changes,
water which may have entered the phone as innocent humidity, then condenses
inside the phone, forming larger droplets. Now, not only do you have the
oxidation of the metals, but you’re also in danger of electrochemical migration
water damage, without ever getting your phone wet.
Should I be worried?
Believe it or not, manufacturers are continuously looking
for ways to make your phones more reliable. Motorola and Alcatel have already
signed up to put the splash-proof coating on a range of devices before you buy them, so
you don’t need to worry. We believe that as people continue to integrate the
use of the mobile phone into every aspect of their life (including taking their
phones in and out of humid conditions) then this trend from manufacturers will
only increase.
Author Bio: Matt Powell is the editor for the UK broadband, smartphone and tablet information site Broadband Genie.
Mobile World Congress is the
largest mobile technology trade show in the world and traditionally it’s been
the place where phone companies show off new releases.
However this year HTC and Sony
revealed their latest smartphones a few weeks in advance of MWC, while Samsung
kept the Galaxy S4 for a separate event in New York. What’s the point, critics
said, of spending all this time and money on a huge event if the block-busting
hardware has already been unveiled?
But MWC is about more than a few
headline superphones. There were hundreds of exhibitors demonstrating all kinds
of interesting new mobile technology, and focusing solely on the big players
could mean missing out on some really important advancements, like P2i and its
water-repelling nanotechnology.
Plenty of mobile phones offer
water-proofing, but in most cases this involves wrapping the phone in a thick
layer of rubber and sealing up all the ports. This is effective but it’s not usually
attractive.
The P2i solution is far more
elegant. The firm can take any mobile phone (or indeed almost any solid object)
and coat it with a water-repelling coating.
No doubt, this was one of the
most impressive demonstrations at Mobile World Congress.
It helped that the P2i stand had
an attention grabbing setup: immersed in a tray of water was a Samsung Galaxy
S3, powered on and running normally. Even more surprising, the rear cover of
the S3 had been removed so the battery was fully exposed. You can see the full demonstration by P2i on the Broadband Genie
blog.
The S3 had been treated with
Dunkable™, the latest form of P2i’s technology. This protects handsets to IPx7
standards, which requires devices to survive a metre of water for 30 minutes,
though the timer on the S3 suggested it had been underwater for a lot longer
than that.
As the phone was lifted out, the
water droplets just slid off, and once the screen had been dried, it functioned
as normal.
Unfortunately, as it’s a new
development Dunkable™ is not yet available on any hardware. So what could P2i
do for us smartphone users right now?
The answer is its first
commercial splash-proof product. This offers protection against splashes and
spills, and like Dunkable™, water simply slides
off treated surfaces. While you can’t leave a handset immersed for a long period, it can survive everydayincidents that
would kill unprotected devices.
The splash-proof coating is already
used on recent Motorola RAZR smartphones. Like the RAZR i which I’d been
carrying around for the last few months; turns out I was already a splash-proof
user and hadn’t even realised.
P2i can make a real difference to
both manufacturers and end-users. We get water-resistant phones without the
ugly bulk of typical ruggedised handsets, while manufacturers are free to
design phones without having to worry about
needing to adapt the design to “build in” liquid
protection.
The challenge at the moment is
getting the technology onto handsets, and in this, P2i could learn from the
likes of Corning.
Gorilla Glass is now the standard
for toughened phone displays, and it’s become a selling point. Consumers are
becoming increasingly aware that a smartphone with Corning Gorilla Glass means
it’s well protected against scratches and falls.
If P2i is able to build its brand
awareness to the point where consumers base their buying decisions on its
inclusion, they’ll be able to attract more manufacturers and we’ll get to a
point where technologies like the splash-proof coating and Dunkable™ are used
as a matter of course. Then we won’t need to worry as much when our smartphones
take a swim in the toilet bowl.
I wouldn't say I am an accident prone person, but
statistically I have destroyed a disproportionate number of phones due to water
damage. One of the things that struck me, was how sometimes, if you’re quick at
getting your phone out of the water and you turn it off, then pray to the phone
Gods and keep your fingers crossed, sometimes, just sometimes, it magically
comes back on again the next day…(at least until a week or two later when it
starts acting ‘funny’).
In order to get a better understanding of what’s going on
with a wet phone, I had a chat with the team in the P2i labs.
What happens when
your phone gets wet?
There is a magnitude of possible outcomes when your phone
gets wet. If you think about the number of entry points for water to get in the
phone, then times that by the number of possible angles of entry, force of
entry, droplet size (fully submerged, spray, mist, sweat) and type of liquid,
you begin to see why the answer is not so black and white!
Perhaps one of the most obvious outcomes is that your phone ‘short
circuits’ and powers out. If you think of a circuit board like a series of
motorways, in the same way that we drive cars according to the direction and
paths provided, the circuit board controls the flow of electrons, ensuring that
your device works as specified. However when you add water to the mix, it’s
like driving cross country or along sand dunes where there are no roads to act
as a guide. As a conductor of electricity the water allows the electrons to
flow freely.
With the liquid inside the phone allowing the electricity to
flow in unintended directions, the essential voltage differences across the
circuit board are interrupted, causing excessive electric current, heat and
power outage.
Ok, so if I’m lucky enough to have my phone turn back on,
why does it start going ‘funny’ after a couple of days/weeks?
If you have ever opened a water damaged phone or piece of
electronics you may have seen what looks like rust or a perhaps a white powdery
substance. In the first instance the water or liquid is interacting with the
metal causing a chemical reaction, as you would see with any metals exposed to
the elements, like a tin roof. Except unlike the roof, the addition of energy
supplied by the phone under power, accelerates the process. This causes degradation
and wearing away of the metals inhibiting them from performing effectively.
This is particularly evident in devices that are used in environments such as
the gym or are kept close to the skin like headphones and hearing aids, where the
addition of the salts in our sweat aid in the severity of the chemical
reaction.
So what is it that
makes a phone die altogether?
Well this takes us back to the highway analogy. There is a
type of corrosion called ‘electrochemical migration’. This is essentially the
movement of metal ions from one point on a circuit board to another. This is
able to occur because the water allows the free flow of electricity; so where
once there were paths for the electricity to flow, allowing controlled differences
in electrical charge between different points on the circuit, nowthe water allows the metal ions to migrate. Eventually
the metal ions will bridge the two points through the formation of a metal dendrite,
acting as if a new road was created. Now, even when the water recedes, this new
road permanently disrupts the control of electricity on the circuit board and the
phone is no longer able to function as intended.
Do you have any
advice for people who get their phones wet?
It’s key to stop the electrical flow as soon as possible so
first thing is to take the battery out. Then dry any excess visible water –
worth noting that you should avoid trying to shake the water out as you may be inadvertently
forcing it further into the device. Leave the phone to dry out completely
before succumbing to the urge to test it…and unless it’s a Motorola or Alcatel
device already treated with P2i’s tech, than feel free to keep your fingers
crossed.
There’s a look of genuine concern on Jason Bradbury’s face
as he says, “…are you ready for this? 500 quid in the drink”, and places the Samsung
Galaxy SIII into a flask of water. Now we all know electronics and water don’t
mix, but Jason is showing off Dunkable™, the latest nano-coating technology
from P2i, so we are
confident everything will go well.
You see Dunkable™ is a hydrophobic barrier coating which
means that not only does it combat forces like capillary action (which would
draw the water throughout the internals of the device) but it also acts as a
barrier to stop the water and the electronics interacting at the molecular
level.
The result is that
Polly and Jason can maintain a Skype video call underwater. See The Gadget Show
website to watch the clip for yourself:
After the show we received a number of emails, tweets and Facebook
comments, all asking where people could get their phones treated, and how much
it would cost. And this is where the title of the show comes into play… “Future
Special”.
What the show was, well, showing, is that P2i has developed
the technology to protect devices from water damage. But now comes the futuristic part, as we look to major manufacturers to incorporate the technology into the manufacturing
process. So you won’t need to pay extra to add this feature to
your device, it will come as standard!
In fact, our splash-proof nano-coating technology already
comes as standard on Motorola smartphones and tablets. So you can rest assured it’s
protected from everyday accidental splashes and spills. In January we also
announced a partnership with Alcatel who are rolling out the splash-proof
technology onto their latest range of smartphones.
So although you can’t buy a phone with Dunkable™ on it yet, the
future may not be that far away…
In some ways, Mobile World Congress (MWC) is like a storm, descending on Barcelona each year, bringing thousands of the world’s leading mobile technology experts and brands, to the four day event. From dawn we begin to congregate at the exhibition center, like ants scurrying to be in the nest before the rain hits - only to return to the outside world again at dusk, looking like a wave of zombies, exhausted from the days exciting events. Inside the halls the bright lights show off extravagant displays with the latest model phones and tablets for all to see. There is one booth that stands out as being a little different this year. The feature on this booth is not a phone per say but … a toilet.
At MWC P2i is previewing its very latest technology. Named Dunkable™, this tech provides protection against accidental submergence, offering what is known in the industry as an IPx7 rating. This means the phone can survive being under one meter of water for half an hour. See for yourself in this video as P2i's Chief Technical Officer (the guy who invented the technology) dunks a phone in the loo:
