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Comment by Tommah | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how reliable this will be. Back in the summer, my mom plugged her iPhone in to charge, and it gave a warning saying that it couldn't charge because there was liquid in the charging port. However, the port was bone-dry, and there was no liquid anywhere near the phone. It turned out that the charger didn't like the extension cord that it was plugged into. I took the extension cord away, and the phone started charging.

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They'll save money on warranty repairs in that case - by blaming your mom for a water spill - so it'll all work out for them.

It's not even a new trick, some scammy repair companies here in Europe loved to claim water damage to avoid warranty repairs.

The "liquid" detection just measures conductivity between certain pins that should not have any. Sounds like the extension cable was damaged/faulty?

They don't want to service the laptop even if you don't have warranty.

I have a Mac from 2016, probably had a minor water event, water spilled on table and slightly touched the chasis. I don't remember anything significant. The battery lasts 20 minutes in 2021, I go and ask them to replace it and they refuse because of "water damage" and warn that the machine can fry at any moment. The laptop is still running fine daily in 2024.

They can only "fix it" by charging more than a price of Macbook Air M1, they do not want to replace the battery but the whole board.

Apple is the same as any car dealership nowadays. They give techs a very limited time, if any, to diagnose an issue. The solution is always to replace parts. Most of Apple’s solutions are replacing the logic board instead of fixing anything on it.

Once the computer is old enough I’d seek out an indie if possible, same for my cars if I can’t fix the issue or don’t have time.

There are tabs inside the device that change color on water intrusion for that.

Turns out it's impossible to prove what state those water tabs were in before the device was opened by a technitian in the back room ;)

Which also change colour due to humidity changes.

… which is water.

It’s actually impressive how resilient phones are.

True, but regular water rarely harms circuit boards for a one time exposure. Salt water, or soda, on the other hand... What Apple really needs is a USBC taste tester :)

Maybe they could use some kind of "corrosion canary"... some piece of metal that will behave like the circuit components in a standard way.

But getting water in an iPhones charging port doesn’t void the battery? It’s more of a safety feature that can malfunction occasionally

Sony has this like forever. And in my opinion, it works really well. It only trigger when I use my wet hand to hold it or when I wash it(you know, sony smartphone is well known for overheat). It never trigger for other reason for the entire period I am using it.

The lightning port detection of "liquids" in my old iphone was never once right.

I have a wall charger that triggers the liquid detection on my Samsung phone if the charger has gotten tugged partially out of the outlet. I use the same charger literally every night and it works fine.

I'm incredibly leery of this functionality being used to deny warranty claims as a result.

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