nospam
the buttons and switches are visible from the outside and can be operated without any disassembly, therefore they are not internal.

Eric Stevens
Certainly the switch lever projects beyond the case so that you can get at it to operate, but the switch is inside the csae and has an internal cover which has to be removed. It's very hard to regard that as an external switch.

Sandman
So, using that definition, what *IS* an external switch to you? Got any good examples of a switch that has no components inside the device?

Eric Stevens
I certainly don't know of one on any of Apple's products. As far as I know all switches (and everything else) are inside the device with the only remotely external components being those that reach the surface to enable the user to operate them. If you really want an irelevant example of an external switch you should see https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31088803/DCBwithFOCS.jpg

Sandman
Not that it matters, the topic was that all smart phones today rarely suffer from data loss due to not having any moving parts. The ring/vibrate switch is a moving part, but has nothing to do with the data on the device, so whether or not you want to call that an internal or external switch really doesn't matter that much.

Eric Stevens
It certainly doesn't matter from the point of view of data loss.

I was addressing your statement that there were no internal switches. There certainly seems to be at least one to me.

Apart from that point, it certainly is not worth arguing over: none of us know exactly what PeterN was told by Apple or have any real idea of what kind of problems it could provoke.