Nokia won’t be making its Lumia phones waterproof anytime soon

A number of reports out of the UK late last week suggested that Nokia plans to apply its superhydrophobic coating to upcoming Lumia and / or PureView devices, however we have spoken with the company and that is not the case. Conor Pierce, Nokia’s VP for Western Europe, conducted a presentation on Thursday talking up Nokia’s research heritage — including mention of the company’s development of a waterproof coating for its devices, similar in effect to the stuff you’ll find on the Droid RAZR or Panasonic’s Eluga — while also introducing the budget-conscious Lumia 610 to the assembled journalists.

Somewhere along the way, the two topics have grown conflated, which Nokia has clarified was not Conor’s intent: “he did not say that Superhydrophobic coatings would be coming to future Pureview and Lumia devices.” So yes, the ultimate goal of any research lab endeavor is indeed for those efforts to materialize in shipping devices, but no, Nokia isn’t planning to unleash a whole new range of waterproof Lumias on us — however tempting that might sound.