Samsung's Galaxy S4 Active isn't child-proof, the warranty says so

Adverts show the phone getting dunked in water but the manual says you'd need to check twenty 'snap points' first

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Active is being touted by some as a ‘waterproof, dustproof and childproof’ mobile phone. However, the phone’s own warranty explicitly warns users that it does not cover “exposure to liquid, moisture, dampness, and or dirt”.

This is despite the fact that Samsung’s own adverts show the handsets being dropped into swimming pools, soaked with hoses, buried in sand and rescued from bowls of flour.

The S4 Active is rated IP67, meaning it’s ‘dust tight’ and can survive 30 minutes up to immersion depths of one metre, but this is only once you’ve checked the twenty ‘snap points’ on the back of the phone and inserted the USB cover into the charger jack.

Now, this is still impressive for a bells-and-whistles smartphone like the S4 Active, but it’s hardly the sort of passive, always-on protection that Samsung are implying consumers are buying.

Tech site VentureBeat was the first to point out this discrepancy, also noting that other features of the phone – such as the ‘aqua mode’ for the camera – actively encourage the sort of treatment that is explicitly not covered by Samsung’s warranty.

The S4 Active comes with a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, a 5-inch screen with 443ppi pixel density, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory (of which 11.25GB is usable).