To the SCUBA geeks out there, you might be a tad excited to know that Patima has released a “pro level” underwater housing for Apple’s iPhone 4s. Similar in construction to most cases, Patima’s casing is made of stainless steel and aluminum making it negatively buoyant. The case comes with four buttons, three to interact with the touch screen and one to push the home screen.
Patima’s case for the iPhone / iPhone 4s will set you back about USD $300 online. To be fairly honest, you can totally opt for a much better deal if you consider the opportunity cost. A $ 300.00 housing is enough to get you a decent case from Ikelite to fit into your JVC or Canon S95. But I guess the main selling proposition here is the sheer novelty of being able to bring your iPhone underwater. The phone functions won’t work of course — not just because signal gets lost at about 30 ft max, but also because you won’t have any way of pressing the other buttons. The three buttons control the camera functions — shifting from video to photo, taking snaps and entering the gallery. I also don’t see any way you can unlock the phone from sleep mode with these buttons. Try it yourself. Try unlocking the phone by pressing onto the start, middle and end of the slider. You can’t do it. So it really baffles me as to how you’re going to keep the phone always active underwater. Add the fact that by leaving it on, you’re going to be generating a lot of heat underwater which will definitely fog up the housing. Sure, silica gel can solve the problem, but I’m still boggled as to how you’re going to unlock the phone from inside.
Nonetheless, if you’re up for a barebones case and want to take your iPhone down, then nobody is stopping you. You’ll probably get decent shots till about 20-30ft where there’s still light, but deeper than that you may have to carry LED lights when you record or shoot. The Patima housing doesn’t have any provision to attach these lights so everything is rather DIY.
Patima iPhone 4s Case [~ USD $300.00]