Apple has reportedly admitted defeat when it comes to saving the iPhone 6 belonging to 14-year-old Austin Stephanos, who went missing with his friend Perry Cohen last July 24 — only for his damaged, non-working smartphone to be discovered off the coast of Bermuda.
It was hoped that being able to get the iPhone up and running would offer some answers about what happened to the two boys, whose disappearance prompted an extensive eight-day search of the Atlantic, spanning 50,000 nautical miles.
Apple received the handset back in April, at which point its engineers took the iPhone apart, meticulously cleaned its components, and carried out a chemical report — trying in vain to get the device to power back on.
Before Apple admitted defeat, Austin’s father, Blu Stephanos, said that: “We’ve been working with [Apple] who [seem] willing to help us try to get the phone operational again. That would be the first order of business, since Austin’s phone has been submerged in salt water for over eight months. We’ve also had an IT expert access the phone’s Cloud backup and, unfortunately, found that it had never been enabled.”
Unfortunately it appears now that the iPhone marks a dead end in the investigation, although Pam Cohen, one of the parents of the missing teens, thanked Apple for the effort it had put in.
“We learned yesterday that Apple went as far as they could to try to get Austin’s iPhone working, which, as Apple advised, was the first step in the process of retrieving information that might help us understand what happened to the boys,” she said on Wednesday. “Apple also made it clear that getting the iPhone to power up was its only commitment to Blu Stephanos, which differs from what we heard from his attorney in court. For the generous efforts by Apple’s engineers, who we understand worked tirelessly to try to help us, we are so very grateful.”
Source: ABC
