HzO demos cell phone water-proofing product (w/ video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- A company called HzO has unveiled what it calls an invisible vapor coating for electronic and other devices to prevent water damage, this week at the New York Press Preview prior to the annual CES show in Las Vegas in January. The demo showed a smartphone being dropped into a bowl of water and receiving a call while still submerged. After retrieval from the water, the phone appears to work as normal. The company says its product doesn’t seal the case of the phone, but the electronics inside.

At the demo, company President and CEO Paul S. Clayson explained that the company employs a “nano-scale film barrier,” that according to an official video put out by the company, covers all the “nooks and crannies” that occur inside (and out presumably) of virtually any device. To that effect, a treated business card was also dropped into the water and survived without soaking up so much as a drop.

At this time it appears the name of the product and the name of the company are one and the same, i.e. HzO. The company says it has formed an alliance with Zagg, a company that currently makes protective electronic skins to ward off scratches and other damage to Smartphones, iPhones, etc. to market the first devices treated with the new technology.

The whole idea, the company says, is to protect consumers from the device killing attributes of water. On their website , they say that millions of cell phones are killed every year due to spillage or phones being dropped into water (mainly into toilets by men presumably).

Also, the company says their product coats at the molecular or nanoscale level which means it should be virtually invisible (thus it won’t distort the display) and perhaps can’t be felt either. More will be known when January rolls around and consumers get the chance to get their hands on a treated device at CES.

At this point, it appears that the product would have to be applied by the manufacturer, seeing as how the company says that water does indeed penetrate the device, it just isn’t allowed to cause any havoc once in there. Also unclear is just how such devices are actually treated, (an official company video calls it a “unique technology process”) though it appears that it is sprayed on. Common sense would say that the individual parts of the phone are sprayed, both inside and out, and then the device is assembled. Though clearly in this case the phone was disassembled by HzO (since they don’t manufacture the Galaxy S II used in the demo) sprayed, then reassembled, which might mean a new niche market is about to emerge if the new product works as well as advertised.

© 2011 PhysOrg.com