Pantech Element LTE tablet and its Patents for Waterproof technology

Pantech has announced that it applies patents for its waterproof Pantech Element LTE. The new waterproof technology is applied to the LTE tablet which is already available via AT&T. The Pantech Element P4100 is now patent pending in order to protect the new waterproof technology. Pantech has obtained a domestic patent for the new technology and has now applied for international patents. Pantech has already completed a patent application in Korea for its waterproof LTE smartpad.

The Pantech Element LTE smartpad which was unveiled at CES 2012 is completely waterproof up to 1 meter underwater. On January 9 at the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas, Pantech’s overseas marketing director Lim Sung-Jae gave a demonstration taking out the device from a water tank, winning the admiration of all the VIPs in attendance.

According to the press release,

While the existing waterproof technology fixes silicon rings onto the rim of devices, Pantech’s new technology warps the main board and internal parts with a waterproof sheet, providing improved production efficiency and a waterproof performance.

In the past, putting silicon rings onto the devices’ rim took long time as it was done manually. Besides, there were wide variations between assemblers so that a high error rate was inevitable. However, Pantech’s new technology has enabled automated production lines, making the procedures simpler as well as reducing the error rate.

In terms of the waterproof performance, the silicon ring type has proven to be less effective in the case of damage to the exterior frame as it only covers the edges. To avoid this, the device has to be thicker. In the case of the Pantech Element, however, the main board and internal parts are covered with a waterproof sheet which ensures the same level of water resistance in the case of exterior case damage. The gadget itself can also be slimmer.

As you probably already know, not only having a water-resistant shell, the Pantech Element tablet is equipped with an 8-inch XGA screen, a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, enhanced Piezo Motor haptic feedback that enables the production of ultrasonic or acoustic vibrations thus creating a rotary motion, and many more.

Over the past 10 years, Pantech have constantly invested around 10 percent of their annual sales into research and development projects. Pantech secured 13,000 cases of intellectual property rights, including 3,391 patents rights, at home and abroad in the 3rd quarter of 2011.