Just because sprinklers go off doesn't mean everything in the room is already on fire. They are deployed when the fire is in a small area.
That is not always the case, I worked at many Factories, the MARS company one of them, in many of their control rooms there is a lot of expensive electrical stuff.
What happens in the case of a fire is that first the alarm goes of, then people and or fireman will rush to it, within a minute they can, or distinguish the fire, or in the case when the fire is too big switch on the sprinklers by hand.(Evaluate first)
They rather loose just parts of the control room than the whole control room by water damage.
And I talk about millions of Euros/Dollars.
Before they had a different sprinkler system with Halon but that gas is forbidden in Europe(America too?) now, bad for the environment.
Edit : Fires are rare in Control rooms, its Professional stuff and won't catch fire easily.
I don't see how this technology could continue to work on an electrical contact like the iPhone/iPod dock or headphone jack since after repeated use the coating would have to wear off from the physical abrasion of plugging/unplugging your docking cable and headphones. I suppose even with some small scratches it would remain hydrophobic on a larger scale but eventually it would have to wear off (unless it is EXTREMELY hard).
That's a valid point, if you coat the whole iPhone that would include the connectors, would that mean then that there won't be a connection possible, kind of strange.
Or it is possible but then it is not waterproof anymore.
Then this, because of the design of the iPhone it is impossible to remove the battery, if you drop it into the water and could remove the battery it could make a difference.
I had My phone in My pocket when somebody pushed me into water at a party, removed the battery instantly and opened it, cleaned all the electronics with Alcohol and it worked again for many years.
Apple probably does the same with returned iPhones, just clean the board with a certain solution and put them up as refurbs again, so they don't loose money on them.
