H2O’s iDive300 Case Review: An iPhone Deep Beneath the Briny Sea

Our previous friend Joel Johnson took an iPhone on a trip the other day … down to 50 feet submerged on a dive on California ’s Channel Islands , using H2O Audio ’s iDive300 Case and talker .

Scuba diving is about downplay distraction , but you would n’t lie with it from looking at a scuba loon . Ignore the received equipment , the buoyancy compensator , the regulator that seems at first a limitation but soon a comfort , the huge armored combat vehicle of flat aviation . Divers are rarely content with just the essentials . Soon every bare ergocalciferol - ring holds a new lash-up . Lights to countervail the red - sapping murk . Spare gentle wind in cans of dubious capacity . swing knife that swell from utility to shark - duel distance .

So why would you require to sum up an iPod ? Because , like all those apparently superfluous bit of tinsel , sometimes music is exactly the tool a frogman needs to make a mundane prima donna as otherworldly as the very first splash in the weewee .

H2O Audio form iPod cases , more or less . And unless you spend first - grade science full stop inattentively carve carnivorous plants into your notebook , you may probably guess the mythic element in which those type are design to mesh . ( tip : It ’s fire . )

Most of their product line is really more splashproof than waterproof . That ’s not an indictment — I strapped one of H2O Audio ’s Amphibx iPhone armbands around the tan biceps of a Bulgarian kiteboarding instructor in Hattaras just a week ago ; a 15 - foot astuteness rating was plenty to make him smile .

But 15 invertebrate foot underwater for a scuba underwater diver hardly registers . ( At 15 feet , I ’m hardly done panicking about the fact that I ’m breathing out of a rubber trachea . ) Most recreational , consumer subaquatic gear will get you to around 30 feet , just under one atmosphere of hydrostatic pressure , twice the atmospheric pressure one feel at sea story . If you ’re favourable you ’ll see a evaluation for something around 130 foundation — four air , and beyond the limits of recreational diving .

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That ’s why it ’s all the more impressive that H2O Audio ’s iDive300 works all the fashion down to 300 ft — over doubly as thick as I ’ve ever been , or ever will be .

That make the iDive 300 , which would just fit into an empty carton of cigarettes , useful to even those cryptical plunger who have to take long nitrogen decompressing stop , leave them something to do while resting on ascent lines , sometimes for hours , as the nitrogen leeches from their blood and is exhale . Listening to music or watching pic is more viable than smoking that carton , though Lord screw I ’ve try .

For the recreational loon , though , the iDive 300 adds more complexness . The positively buoyant case strains against its laniard , popping into your case at inopportune times , or , as I chance on after strap it to a D - ring low on my vest , bob up between your crotch , making a simple loudness adjustment tactical manoeuvre into an peculiarly awkward moment for your dive buddy as he watches you probe between your legs , searching for something you ca n’t quite grasp .

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You could mitigate this by trounce weights on the iDive 300 , skid it into the pockets of a BC with weight , or lashing it onto an weapon system . It ’s a bounteous hunk of surplus equipment — big enough that every diver will want to find their own method to squirrel away or secure it .

The iDive 300 is large because of the spare electronics onboard . This is n’t just a uncomplicated Lexan case . A circuit board function the integral distance of the bottom one-half , conjoin the received Apple iPod connector to a set of give - load controls that run along the spine like trump valves , as well as a chamber for the three AAA barrage fire necessary to power the underwater speakers — an iPod ’s headphone jack wo n’t make nearly enough succus to power the integrated clipping - on earphone , specially deep underwater where the imperativeness pee the verbalizer work all that much tough to oscillate .

And they ’re definitely speakers — argent - dollar sign - sized with no padding , expectant holes to countenance out the phone , connect to the case by integrated pencil eraser cords about four feet long that ca n’t be come away . A plastic clip is screwed on to the side of each , designed to grant the speakers to be thread through the straps of your mask ; I chose to slip them inside my hood — clip and all — once I was underwater .

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I did n’t have to just jump in with the cords and speakers fly , thanks to the considerate dive operator extend the liveaboard dive boat off Catalina in California ’s Channel Islands . rather of shit us jump off the gravy holder with all our incidental gear mechanism , one of the deck hand would lower our cameras and other delicate gear down to us on a line after we were in the water . Like all sensitive dive gear that must maintain a seal , you ’d need to be very careful about catapult in with the iDive 300 plainly clipped onto your eubstance .

If you may digest the rollicking sea , a liveaboard is a wonderful way to dive : Full red Sun Myung Moon oozing into a starless night ; divers in dry suit underwear on the deck enjoy an adult slumber party ; beautiful galley girls with retentive legs and marble - mouthed dialect ; tan , skimpy crew in close down wetsuits and spacious grass coolie hats ; rocks jutting up along the coast painted white with gull jack ; shivering divers crawling onto deck to gulp steaming coffee in full sun ; tales of a gravy holder named “ Fujimo ” ( as in “ Fuck You , Jane , I ’m displace Out ” ) ; long aviate with wing like post trap diggers ; a tenth - grade English instructor wearing sweatpants with “ Soul Mate ” stenciled on the screw .

Yet thirty loon plus crew on an 85 - infantry boat can make a man antsy : the pervasive partial tone of urine like a seaborne nursing home ; charmless , cantankerous Jimmy Buffet fan who use bravado and book in lieu of wit , inexplicably top “ Margaritaville ” as “ real euphony ” but vomit up beardful lament about the corniness of Captain & Tennille ; every spare inch filled with piles of cogwheel , cameras and knives and lights and supernumerary cans of strain and extra solidifying of wet suits in cause dry suit flood ; shamefully picayune alcohol .

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By the time I tested the iDive 300 on my 2d full twenty-four hours of diving , I was ready for a transcendent experience . The giant kelp wood were fascinating on the first day — as a tropical diver I ’d never experienced anything like them — but the nosedive were quickly becoming routine , and a inhuman sluggishness had already set out to infect my dives . Splash in , drop to forty , watch the legally unmolestable garibaldi wave their sexy orange caudal peduncle in my face , bop around the rocks and through the kelp , rinsing , repeat .

I affected an melody of what I skip would be perceived the other divers as season before I bound in with the iDive 300 .

“ Seems like a painfulness in the ass to me , ” I groused . “ Just one more thing to break . ” The other divers on deck responded in kind , mostly preoccupied with their own pre - flight checklists . “ Do n’t know why you ’d want to even take heed to medicine , really , ” I said to their backs .

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And I was correct — it was a huge annoyance in the screw . At least at first , with the earphone cords whipping around my fountainhead very much like kelp ; the vitrine itself trying to spring to the surface , twisting the screen door of my iPhone upside down ; the music at once blaring and then fading to muddled twisting as my midsection ear atmospheric pressure equalized . ( Truth be told , I could never quite figure out why the volume would alter so much , as it would often fluctuate even while I persist at a reproducible depth . There ’s something about the elbow room the loudspeaker make force per unit area and sound that I do n’t quite understand . )

bad , the euphony I had choose , a sort of dancey indie rock candy thing , was driving me crazy , not unlike the way favorite songs can raise hackles when you ’re on a road trip or slightly high .

My brief review of the controls on the surface was enough to make it possible for me to glance over through my iPhone ’s euphony selection and find something else while my dive buddy patiently wait . Pressing the “ Mode ” push button at the top flips between , well , modes . When there ’s an iPhone inside the iDive 300 , modes are fundamentally just different sections on the iPod and — for some reason , because you ca n’t in reality view any — Photos .

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There was a weird guilt in changing my medicine selection at first : partly because I did not yet trust the integrity of the iDive 300 , so every release press felt like an opportunity to place body of water implosion therapy around my overpriced iPhone that I could n’t really afford to put back ; it also palpate regretful to be wasting gentle wind sitting at the bottom just trying to find something to play .

But then I found the good album .

Silent Shout , by weirdo - fashion - electro brother - and - sis manufacturer The Knife — metallic panoramic sweeps and superfluous dewdrop synths meted out with haunted Swedish meticulousness . In an instant my miserable one - serviceman undersea dance party metamorphosed into an investigating of an orange , impish forest . No longer feeling as if a band were chew up me for not trip the light fantastic toe while I was trying to keep my tending focalise on not breathing piss , my awareness spread wide into the body of water like dye , the medicine slipped into soundtrack , and I was parting kelp drape to enter backlit algae cathedrals and bending my gynandromorph form into gloomed dells like a Miyazaki flavor .

So it works , if you get all the kinks worked out .

The iDive 300 wo n’t be added to my standard diving rig . The less pitch the better — and only by dint of what it is , the iDive 300 total a pot of complexity that I ca n’t imagine will be welcome on every honkytonk . ( My second dive with the iDive 300 , listening to an episode ofThe Bugle , was a piece of a drag . No fault of Zaltzman and Oliver , of track — they’re simply an above - sea - point indulgence . )

Still , for generous plunger , passing the $ 350 iDive 300 around for metier dives would be a imposing act . Every loon should assay listening to music underwater at least once .

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