[Derf]

Out of curiosity, I live on Long Island in NY and have been taking my Clara to the beach to read a few times and it’s fine, including today, although it’s not waterproof. It doesn’t get wet while I’m on the sandy beach, maybe if I was reading while wading around in the ocean it’d be a different story.

I shower, so I don’t read in a bath, but I take the Clara to the pool and can read it just fine there too. I don’t take it into the pool, but read it while lying on a lounger beside the pool.

I don’t see anyone else wishing they could use their phones while playing in the surf, or swimming in a pool, although they love to use them at almost every other time (commuting to school/work, while eating, while working, while working out, while walking across town, in bed at night, etc). If more phones were waterproof, would people be using them in pools and in the ocean? Are those of us without waterproof eReaders really missing out? Would we be able to really use our devices in locations we couldn’t if they were waterproof? Would we really want to use them there?

What I’m asking is, how much is waterproofing really important, or is it really a selling point?

Say you’re by the ocean- are you worried about waves splashing up on it while you’re wading around waist deep? Or if you’re by the pool, are you worried someone does a cannonball off the diving board and splashes you while you float around on a donut?
I could imagine in a bath you’d be touching the screen a lot with wet fingers, but I would think that if you’re using a kobo in an environment that the screen is getting wet a lot or with heavy splashes that the screen would be less/unresponsive, so it wouldn’t be an ideal reading location anyway.