The Waterproof Cell Phone, and Why It’s Good for the Environment

A lot of cell phones end up in the toilet, but not on purpose.

While precise numbers are tough to come by, it happens enough so that if you waterproofed cell phones, you could extend the average life of many of them by a year, according to Captain John Konrad, who runs the gCaptain blog and is one of the people helping to promote Golden Shellback, a waterproof coating for electronics devised by the Northeast Martime Institute. Apply the coating to a cell phone or a notebook and you can submerge them without harm.

The NMI is now trying to commercialize the coating. It actually evolved from a splash proof coating for a man overboard system. It’s somewhat expensive now, but could come down with volume production. NMI has been in contact with several large vendors.

Konrad also noted that the coating is environmentally safe. To demonstrate it, Sid Martin, the director of technology at NMI, coated a sugar cube and ate it.

Konrad, by the way, is a licensed ship captain who follows nautical technology through his blog. Earlier this year, I spoke to him about green ship designs.