Losing your cell-phone because of water damage could become a thing of the past thanks to a California start-up company. Liquipel has developed an innovative nano-coating techinque to help prevent cell-phone water damage. The company claims it can completely waterproof your phone.
"Liquipel is a preventative coating, so it's not something that we're marketing in a way that we want people swimming with their devices or needlessly exposing them to water", said Liquipel co-founder Kevin Bacon. "That's more to prevent those accidents which usually water-damage your electronics, such as being caught in the rain, dropped in the sink, or unfortunately, it happens, put in the toilet, or if you've got to take a quick call in the shower, those types of things."
The company says liquipel is not a case, but rather an impenetrable nano-coating, vaporized from liquid covering the entire phone, including all the vital components both in and outside the phone. According to the company, the coating does not alter the shape of the phone, and will not be noticed by the human eye.
The need for a waterproof cell-phone is becoming more and more apparent. According to a Google , 39 percent of people admit to taking their smartphones into the bathroom at some point. Websites to help people save their cell phones from water damage have been popping up all over the web.
"What we're able to do is place your electronic device inside our especially engineered Liquipel machine," sales agent Sarah Chitrars said. "In that machine we have a chamber that pumps down and ignites our plasma process to permeate your device on a molecular level, so the internal and external components. At the end of that process, which takes about 30-35 minutes, your phone has been Liquipeled."
Liquipel says customers can mail their devices to their offices in Santa Ana, California to have their phones coated for $59. The product was first unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. Liquipel received so many phone calls after first introducing the product they had to briefly close its customer operations.
"It has been absolutely unreal," said Bacon. "I can't put a number on it but I can tell you that it has been challenging our capacity. But since then we have gone full scale, brought in the extra help that we needed and we're back and open for business."
Right now, Liquipel has 11 approved devices, including the iPhone , that can currently be treated, but Bacon says it will not stop at cell-phones. "The coating itself is applicable to all type of personal electronic devices so we hope to see it in the majority of products that are going to be coming or released," Bacon said. "It's just right now we've chosen to focus primarily on mobile phones, just because we feel like they're the ones that are most likely to come into situations where they're going to be water-damaged. These phones have become an extension of ourselves and we shouldn't be limited by the environments that we're able to take them into."
