Mobile phone you can use in the shower
Soon there really will be no escape from mobile phones. They can be used on the world's highest mountains, on planes and even underground, but phone manufacturers now want customers to use their products underwater.
Context & Ripple Effects
Waterproofing has been creeping from niche to mainstream for two years: Korea unveiled a water-proof cell phone back in December 2005, and in July 2007 Fujitsu claimed the world's slimmest waterproof mobile. The Telegraph's year-end piece argues manufacturers now want the device in the shower and underwater — the last rooms without coverage.
What makes the timing notable is that the enabling technology is arriving on the materials side rather than the case side: P2i's Ion-Mask nano-coating, covered by Engadget the same day, promises to make waterproof phones an everyday occurrence by treating components directly instead of sealing them in bulky housings. The bathroom itself was already being repositioned as connected space in a 2006 Wall Street Journal piece on the Type-A Bathroom, so handset makers are following their customers into it.
First-order effects
- Handset makers gain a new differentiator for saturated feature-phone markets: water resistance marketed as everyday usability — shower, bath, sink — rather than rugged-specialist gear.
- Buyers of Fujitsu-style waterproof handsets and future Ion-Mask-coated devices can stop treating moisture as a warranty-voiding hazard, changing how phones are used and insured around water.
Second-order effects
- Case and accessory makers who sell protective housings face substitution pressure if coating-based waterproofing becomes standard at the component level.
- Carriers and retailers get a fresh spec to compete on in mature markets where talk time and camera megapixels no longer differentiate.
Third-order effects
- If coatings like Ion-Mask scale, water resistance shifts from premium feature to baseline expectation, raising the durability floor for the whole handset industry.
- The bathroom joins the mountain, plane and underground as covered territory, completing the anywhere-use premise that underpins always-on mobile services and the habits built on them.
The trend: Mobile hardware is absorbing environmental protection into the device itself through materials innovation, turning former edge-case durability features into default expectations across the handset market.