Unfortunately, those water seals don't just change if exposed to a sudden submersion. They are also prone to change, over a reasonable period of time, if they are just used in a humid area, a damp country or by someone with slightly sweaty hands. In fact, pretty much any use of a mobile phone that could be considered reasonable and normal will trigger these things over a period of a couple of years. Which gives HTC a great "get out of jail free" card when it comes to honouring warranties on devices that have genuinely developed a fault entirely unrelated to "water boarding" or any other form of liquid based communications device torture.

All manufacturers have tamper proof seals (although usually just a sticker over a screw saying void) and Moisture sensitive stickers inside somewhere.

Standard practice for the mobile industry nowadays.

Paris cos she knows about getting wet....

Even old Nokias have had several small stickers that change colour when wet. Apple has had them on iPods too. This isn't new...

Tamper evident labels have been around since the 80s - I'm sure even earlier than that.

... the iPhony and iPud stickers the change printed verbage - One iPhone sticker states "This may work now, but wait till you download the first Apple Update", it changes to - "Stupid shit, you updated and now your iPhony is dead"

Both the iPhony Stupid Phone and iPud have stickers that state before you hand your credit card to the Apple Screw-you Store dork - "This is the latest and greatest new model" and as soon as they swipe you credit card through the card reader, the sticker changes to read "Sucker, Stevie Gods will announce a new model in a week and / or lower the price by 25%, your model is now OBSOLETE!"

AppleTards with a new Platinum VISA Card at an Apple Screw-you Store - Priceless .... literally.

Huh? Why, in the 21st century, would you create a dual band 2G, 3G 1700 phone? Who could find that useful?

Oh, I just googled it. New York. It's a New York phone. Useless everywhere in the world except the USA. It probably only plays NTSC videos and might come with an optional Betamax slot.

And it is dual band...

Yikes... Hardly innovative or a step forward... All their other offerings make this obselete before it is released...

@ Webster

:)

My knowledge of cellular in the US aint great but didn't think they were using the 1700 band

@Webster, think you are getting your cards mixed up mate, the priceless thing was mastercard.

I personally use American Express whenever possible although I have Visa and Mastercard cards as these are for poor people ;-)

@James Bassett

Strange, I've been using mobile since the mid 90's and never had a problem with any of these stickers.

Maybe I just don't sweat enough and avoid using my phone in the rain.

I've worked in the mobile industry for a few years now and every time i have seen a mobile with one of these stickers showing it has got wet, there's usually some rust or corrosion somewhere else as well, or at lest some crud that shows that there was excess liquid in the device at some point. I can only think of one that didn't have any corrosion, and that had the dye from the sticker all over the inside so it had obviously got wet.

The manufacturers I've worked with (Nokia, Ericsson (pre Sony) and yes, HTC) use this as a guide, but if there is no other evidence then it is ignored, as it is well known that they are not the most reliable of tests.

Any manufacturer that does base their decision solely on the colour of the sticker is not to be trusted, but considering I've worked for three of the biggest in the last few years, I doubt anyone would be that silly!

ZOMG!?1!?

A smrat fone that does stuff and has stickerz in it. Iz gettin 1!