OnePlus 6 Teardown Reveals Real Water Resistance Rating

The newly launched OnePlus 6 has already been torn down once, and that didn't exactly end on a high note. That said, iFixit's process was more interested in checking out how easy, or hard, it is to repair the smartphone outside of official channels. JerryRigEverything's Zach Nelson, on the other hand, had a specific question in mind when he took his OnePlus 6 apart: just how water-resistant is the OnePlus 6. The answer might just surprise you.

The OnePlus 6 scored 5 out of 10 on iFixit's scale. While not exactly encouraging, there are phones that have done worse. Part of what made it hard to crack, figuratively only of course, was the large amount of strong adhesive under the glass back, which Nelson confirms in his Clear Glass Back Mod.

That adhesive does serve a purpose. It is part of what keeps the phone sealed against simple water ingress. OnePlus, of course, didn't advertise an IP rating for the OnePlus 6, but the YouTuber investigates just how much waterproofing is in there anyway. It turns out quite a lot.

In addition to the adhesive, the OnePlus 6 has waterproofing rubber around some of the places of water entry points such as the headphone jack and the USB port. There are also water-resistant meshes protecting the speakers and mics. The one place where there seemed to be less than reassuring protection was around the SIM card tray.

Nelson theorizes that the OnePlus 6 has the same amount of waterproofing that an IP67 smartphone would have, which is actually pretty high. It is, then, somewhat puzzling that OnePlus didn't get the phone officially rated. Perhaps it was just playing it safe and avoiding potential lawsuits like the ones that Sony faced years ago.