With a price tag of $399, it’s just as well the Apple Watch can survive a dip in the water.
The company says its smartwatch, now in its fifth iteration, offers water resistance to 50 meters, so you’re good to go for a swim with it, or take a shower.
Now, you might be thinking, “But what about those tiny speakers, aren’t they an entry point for water?” Indeed they are, but Apple came up with some clever technology (for the second version onward) that coughs out any water to protect your watch’s delicate innards and ensure you’re not left with a brick strapped to your wrist following an immersion, whether planned or not.
To demonstrate this clever technology, The Slow Mo Guys cranked up their camera to capture what turned out to be some rather striking footage (below).
First, Slow Mo Guy Gavin switches the watch to water-lock mode, which disables the touch display to prevent any accidental taps.
After taking a swim in a bathtub, Gavin removes his Apple Watch and places it close to a macro lens. He then exits water-lock mode by turning the Digital Crown, which also initiates the process for ejecting water from the device.
With the footage slowed down by 80 times, we can see the Apple Watch cough out numerous tiny droplets in a single burst.
“I was immediately blown away by how much water actually came out in this shot,” Gavin muses, though he puts this down to the effects of the super-close-up macro lens.
In the following moments, you can see the remaining droplets “trapped” in the speakers. The mechanism for expelling the water then appears to pause before kicking into action again, pushing out more water. The footage reveals that the Apple Watch performs 10 full cycles of the expulsion process before coming to a halt.
As Gavin points out later in the video, once most of the water is out of the smartwatch, you can get a much better look at the speaker surface rattling away.
As a bonus, he also tested the mechanism under water to see if it would work when submerged. Check out the video to find out what happened.
Commenting on the experiment, Gavin said, “I actually found that a lot more interesting than I thought I would.” We think you will, too.
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