The iPhone is apparently more resistant to water than Apple itself thinks. Source: Pixabay
In the UK, a man lost his iPhone in a river and got it back working around ten months later, like them BBC reports. The smartphone actually lay in the river almost the entire time before it was found and dried.
Owain Davies was on a bachelor party where the group went canoeing down the River Wye in Cinderfort, Gloucestreshire. On this trip, he fell into the water when his passenger in the canoe got up and accidentally overturned it. His iPhone fell into the river, where it should be for the next ten months. That happened in August 2021.
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The iPhone was recovered
Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco found the iPhone while taking his family on a canoe trip down the Wye River. According to his statements, he saw something blue in the river and took this object with him. After finding out it was an iPhone, he took it home to dry.
He did that because people often save a lot of pictures of the family and children on their smartphones. He thought he could at least salvage the datastore if he dries it. So he did this with an air compressor and left it on the shelf overnight.
The next morning he then connected it to the charger and was surprised that the iPhone actually charged from the river and showed something on the display. There was a picture of a couple and August 13, the day the smartphone fell into the water. It looked like this:
This is what the home screen looked like after the iPhone was reactivated. Source: BBC/Owain Davies/Miguel Pachaco
The search begins
Now that he had a clue as to who owned the iPhone, he wanted to track that person down. For this, he posted the picture of the two in a local Facebook group, where it was shared more than 4,000 times. A friend of the couple recognized them and notified them, after which Owain Davies got his iPhone working again after around ten months.
How can an iPhone survive in water for so long?
Unfortunately, the story does not reveal which iPhone model it is exactly, but modern models from the iPhone 11 are certified with IP68. In terms of water resistance, however, this only means that the iPhones are protected against fresh water at a depth of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes.
Also Apple itself says you don’t intentionally submerge the iPhone in water and should not go swimming or bathing. The device is therefore not protected against permanent immersion. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that a modern iPhone can’t survive longer dives.
However, you should not rely on this, as Apple does not give you any guarantees. In this particular case, it was probably the case that the river isn’t particularly deep, which meant there was little pressure on the iPhone and the water didn’t get into the sensitive parts.
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Have you ever lost your iPhone or Android phone in water or accidentally submerged it for a long time? What was the result? Please let us know.
