By Graham K. Rogers

One of the problems Apple had a couple of years back concerned the sensor in an iOS device that indicates if water has come into contact with it. Areas like I live in have rather high humidity and the sensors may not have been set up to take full account of this, despite Apple claiming they did so. One only has to step out of a taxi into the open air here to have glasses covered with moisture. The same happens with a camera lens; so it may be expected that some moisture may be condensed on an iPhone.

When I walked into the True store with my iPhone 4 that I had walked through the 2011 floods with, I was neither making any claim nor expecting any warranty assistance, but the staff member looked at the sensor to make sure. "Water", she said, confirming my use of the Thai word for flood.

The earlier 3GS had a lousy home button and the device was under a year old. I took it into True. The assistant took one look at the sensor. He said, "Water" and simply handed it back. As it had never been near water at all, this could only have been humidity.

After a lawsuit in California, according to an article on Electronista, Apple has been ordered to pay up to $53 million in settlement for those affected. A copy of the judgement is included with the article and shows who is eligible.

This only applies, however, to those in the United States who had the problem and had warranty claims turned down. All those of us who suffered damage (say to the Home button of the iPhone 3GS) and were turned down by True here, are not going to get anything.

I think there is something wrong or missing here.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.

Image of iPhone 4 reproduced by kind permission of Apple