Water resistant smartphones

[Altamira]

I am not sure I understand the fascination of putting one's cell phone at risk by swimming/snorkeling with it. If I drowned my G7X in a Fantasea housing, I would not be happy because I would know it was likely the result of my own carelessness. But, if I drowned my new Samsung phone because I did not want to spring for something as inexpensive as a GoPro, my aggravation level would rise to the tenth power. I wouldn't even be able to call someone to cry about it, and I would never hear the end of it from my dive buddy/wife.

 

[tursiops]

We carry our cell phones in the Aquarium where we volunteer. People use the Lifeproof cases, and several have comfortably retrieved their phones from the 13 ft bottom with no issues. It is also very good for dropping on concrete....

Once the little door over the charging/data port broke off; Lifeproof replaced the entire case, no questions asked.

 

[Altamira]

The Lifeproof website claims their cases are waterproof to 2 meters for 1 hour, so I am happy your team members have dodged a bullet when their phones went to 13'. Maybe I am an oddball, but when I am swimming, snorkeling, or diving, I do not want to be "connected", so my phone does not go in the water, even though it is supposed to be water resistant to 1.5 meters. I am also uncertain whether cell phone data is retrievable from a drowned phone, so am not willing to take the risk.

 

[Barefootdog]

Altamira...have to agree w/your desire NOT to be connected when in the diving/swimming/snorkeling. Cell phones seem to be changing otherwise normal people into giggling school girls.....

Thumbs up to the Lifeproof case. Around water my Sammie S7 gets switched from the Seidio Convert case to the Lifeproof waterprooof unit.....w/a float attached.

 

[2airishuman]

Thanks for all the replies.

Again, to be clear, I don't have any intention of taking my phone to depth while scuba diving.

Many situations come up where I would like to have my phone while in a wet environment. I run the Navionics chartplotter application on it while canoeing or boating, for example, and I do use it for photos and communication on these trips also. I have also thought of attaching it to my float so I can use it to record GPS coordinates of points of interest that I locate while shore diving.

 

[Storker]

I have also thought of attaching it to my float so I can use it to record GPS coordinates of points of interest that I locate while shore diving.

When I first got a GPS-enabled smartphone I hoped I could use that instead of my dedicated GPSr to record tracks. Reality - or, rather, smartphone battery capacity - quickly showed me that I was quite a bit too optimistic. While my GPSr can run some 10-14 hours before its NiMH batteries runs out of juice, my smartphone dies after a number of hours which comfortably can be counted on one hand.

Quite a few of my outings take longer than two-three hours.

 

[Kevo88]

So far my galaxy s7 has been holding up well to light water exposure. It's been dropped in a creek while fly fishing, sat in my pocket during a wader flood, also while fishing, and has been used in the rain. No detrimental effects as of yet.

 

[Saniflush]

The only time I would take my phone on a dive would be to leave it at depth on purpose, but then that would be littering so never mind.

 

[Jessica Anderson]

All of us in my dive group use Navionics to find dive spots and mark interesting new spots. We all run Navionics on our phones for all day outings. We just bring a change with us and plug in so our phones don't die (to answer Storkers concern).
2airishuman, we sometimes take our phones on the dive by attaching it to our dive flag in a waterproof case. We start the track at the same time we start our watch timers. Then when we see something really cool on the dive, we mark the time. Once on board after the dive e can associate the time to the GPS location using the track saved in the Navionics app. Kinda cool