Originally published at: Helium Is the iPhone’s Kryptonite - TidBITS
Not that you were planning on seeking it out, but Apple recommends that you keep your iPhone and Apple Watch away from high concentrations of helium.
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Drat! I always wanted to call up Tim Cook and talk to him in a cartoon voice!
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And in similar vein: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/helium_reserve.png
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So what exactly is the iPhone bug that makes it susceptible to Helium when Android phones aren’t and why hasn’t Apple fixed it?
It’s not a bug; it’s a choice of component (the oscillator).
Ah, must be a result of miniaturization. I have a degree in electronics and maintained electronic equipment in the USAF but never had any such problem. I guess the solid state oscillator circuit is so small that the Helium molecules can infiltrate. I wonder if it is shared with the other 5 noble gases in Group 18 of the Periodic Table: Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, & Radon. It would be ironic for your article title if Krypton gas does the same as Helium to iPhones!
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From what I read, the problem is that Apple is no longer using a crystal oscillator - they’re too big for the boards in an iPhone.
They’re instead using a MEMS oscillator, which is a nano-scale machine with actual moving parts. The parts are so small that when helium infiltrates the device, it malfunctions.
This is apparently a known issue for many MEMS devices, not just oscillators. The original article mentions that TDK/InvenSense (maker of many kinds of MEMS devices) is aware of the fact that helium can degrade performance of many devices. But it’s maddeningly difficult to seal such a tiny device so thoroughly that helium can’t infiltrate.
I suppose Apple could guard against this by coating the board with a sealant. But wow would that tick off right-to-repair advocates, since any board level repair would require removal of the sealant, which would definitely not be easy.
(I assume helium-filled hard drives don’t leak because they’re big enough to accommodate a much more robust sealing mechanism.)
Thank you for the explanation, David. I was curious if it is something that would happen with other gasses but especially with the other 5 Group 18 ones so I checked the composition of the atmosphere. Helium constitutes only 0.000524% while Argon is 0.9340%. If it is just Helium, it must be some property that is different from the rest of Group 18, perhaps the molecule size.
Helium is extremely tiny and it seeps into everything. In fact, He is used precisely for that reason to check for leaks in UHV (think <1e-9 torr/mbar) equipment. We go through a big bottle of it every month just for that purpose.
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That makes sense, Simon, thank you. BTW, looks like you’ll have to change your avatar soon, first to Sacramento, then to Las Vegas.
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Indeed. This somewhat self-serving article provides an interesting history on the quest to manufacture helium-filled hard drives:
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