Does the New 3Gs Alert Apple When It Senses Water Damage?

So my friend’s new iPhone 3Gs stopped working recently after he got back from vacation in Hawaii in August, we had a look at it and I noticed that the water sensors had been tripped–for those who are unfamiliar, the iPhone has a water sensor that’s a piece of paper that irreversibly turns pink once exposed to water and is visible through the headphone socket for easy diagnosing by Apple Store Geniuses. Now, long story short, my friend figures out through a little Google-fu how to replace the paper in question and does so. He takes his iPhone into the Apple store and tells them it just quit working expecting that they’ll replace it free of charge. The Genius helping him takes the phone over to his computer, runs the number for it, and promptly comes back and tells him that they can’t replace it because it’s water damaged and therefore he’s liable for it and not them. My friend claims it’s never gotten wet (which is true–heavy humidity has been known to cause water damage in the iPhone, which is honestly a fault that the manufacturer ought to take responsibility for; I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to avoid heavy humidity to protect their iPhones), and the Genius tells him that his phone sent in “a water damage notification at 11:38am on Friday, August 28th”–this date corresponds to when my friend was in Hawaii, it was very humid the whole time he was there.

Damn. So I guess what’s happened here is that people were getting

installing an electronic sensor that notifies Apple whenever an iPhone is damaged via water. So there you go. I don’t doubt that someone will come up with a hack to get around this, but for now you just need to be aware of it and really try not to get your iPhone wet.