You probably don’t think about it, but earphones come under a lot of pressure. The cables are pulled at, the housings bounce around in your pocket, and you blast a lot of sound through them. But one thing you might not think about is how they deal with moisture, sweat, and rain, and Plantronics is looking to a nano-coating to fix this.
Similar to what we’ve seen used in Motorola’s line of RAZR handsets – you can see a demo of a water repellant coating here – the water-resistant nano coating is insanely thin, measuring one thousandth of a human hair, and protects against moisture by physically pushing the liquid away, out of the device so it can’t absorb and break it down.
The technology was introduced on the Plantronics Voyager Legend  and is now being added to the BackBeat Go earphones, wireless stereo earpieces that run on Bluetooth.
“Australians are very active and always on the go, so moisture shouldn’t alter the performance of their headset,” said Peter Petrides, National Sales Manager for Plantronics Australia.
“As experts in wearable technology, Plantronics recognises that headsets should operate whatever the environment, so this partnership with P2i was a natural choice. With the P2i coating, any liquid that lands on these devices will simply bead up and run off the headset, instead of permeating electrical components and potentially causing corrosion damage.”
The inclusion of the water-resistant P2i coating is a new thing, and will roll out to the updated generation of BackBeat Go earphones, in both the original black colour, as well as the new white Go earphones coming out, both available for a recommended retail price of $119.
