Samsung's Galaxy S7 Active smartphone, marketed as water-resistant, has failed two separate water immersion tests by product review site Consumer Reports.
The Galaxy S7 Active is IP68-certified, which means the phone can allegedly survive immersion in water up to about 1.5m deep, for up to 30 minutes.
Yet when Consumer Reports' reviewers placed the smartphone in an equally pressurised water tank for 30 minutes, it came out with its screen displaying green lines while the touch elements were unresponsive, and "tiny bubbles were visible in the lenses of the front- and rear-facing cameras".
Conducting a second test on a different phone of the same model, Consumer Reports found "the screen cycled on and off every few seconds, and moisture could be seen in the front and back camera lenses". Water had also gathered in the device's SIM card slot.
Neither device regained its full functionality, the review site concludes.
Samsung responded in a statement that it is investigating the failures, and that the devices would have been covered under warranty in these instances.
Consumer Reports notes other smartphones in Samsung's Galaxy S7 range - the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge - passed the same water-resistance test after making the same water-resistance claims.
Samsung is not the only smartphone-maker to have potentially misled customers with "water-resistant" claims.
Regarding its Xperia range, Sony warns users that "the IP rating of your device was achieved in laboratory conditions in standby mode, so you should not use the device underwater, such as taking pictures". This is despite the company using pictures and videos of users taking underwater photographs with Xperia smartphones to market the range.
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