Sascha Segan writing for PC Mag, explains why the Japanese love waterproof phones from what he learned at the the Fujits booth at CTIA.

“Apparently, in Japan, folks spend a lot of time in the bath. Japanese bathtubs are much deeper and larger than American tubs, and they’re more conducive to lounging around. Japanese folks swear by the health benefits of long, hot, frequent baths.

So an entire waterproof offshoot of the consumer-electronics industry has popped up: waterproof TVs, waterproof cell phones, and of course, waterproof cell phones with TV capability. Because why should you have to stop a nice, long soak to answer the phone? Makes perfect sense to me.

That isn’t the end of the story. Japanese people don’t just like baths, they also typically like features. So once water-fastness started appearing on several phones, it became a standard feature whether or not a phone is destined to be dunked, according to the manufacturer reps.”