Apple Inc. (AAPL) Hopes to Keep Your Device & Itself Safe From This

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is no stranger to filing for and being granted patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Yesterday, for example, we brought you this story about Cupertino and its desire to bring greater technology to the automotive industry.

Today, we are going to talk about another interesting patent from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL): Mechanisms for detecting exposure to water in an electronic device

As the name suggests, the company has come up with a way to detect water exposure in an electronic device, such as an iPhone or iPad.

As simple as this sounds, you have to check out the abstract to learn more about what this patent brings to the table:

“A component carrier has formed therein a water sensor, having a first patterned conductor piece formed in a metal layer of the component carrier and a bridge being an amount of water-soluble conductive glue filling an electrically insulating gap between the patterned conductor piece and another conductor in the carrier. This forms a conductive path between the patterned conductor piece and the another conductor. A sensing circuit is coupled to detect changes in impedance of the path. In another embodiment, a discrete component has a pair of terminals with a bridge being an amount of water-soluble conductive glue filling the electrically insulating gap between the terminals to form a conductive path whose impedance changes in response to coming into contact with a sufficient amount of water. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.”

There are quite a few technical details in this portion of the patent, however, when you look at the technology in an overall sense it is easy to see what it has to offer.

Even more so, this could help Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) better determine how its devices have been damaged by the user. This is discussed in greater depth in the summary, outlined below:

“It would be desirable to detect consumer abuse without having to rely upon the statements of the user who may be returning a unit that is no longer working according to the original specification of the manufacturer. An embodiment of the invention is a water sensor mechanism, which may be used to automatically detect unwanted exposure of a printed wiring board (PWB) or printed circuit board (PCB) in the electronic device, to an amount of water that is likely to cause a malfunction or damage to sensitive electronic components. This water immersion detection mechanism could replace a typical solution in which a pair of bare or exposed sensor electrodes are monitored for a “short” that is caused by water electrically connecting the two electrodes. Several embodiments of the invention are now described.”

All in all, this is an interesting Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) patent for both users and the company as a whole; check out more intriguing patents here.

On the next page, we share an official image published along with the patent.