Canadian Angie Carriere dropped her iPhone into a lake while she was ice fishing. A month later, she retrieved off the bottom of the still-frozen lake. And it works.
Watch a video showing the amazing rescue.
Carriere and her family were celebrating her 50th birthday ice fishing when the handset slipped through a hole in the ice, she told CTV News, “I have the phone on my knee, the tent blows up, I go to grab the tent, and down [the iPhone] goes.”
Determined to retrieve the device from the watery depths, she and her family started a search with a “fish finder” camera and a magnet on the end of a fishing line. There were two unsuccessful trips, but on the third they managed to locate the handset and pull it to the surface.
She was expecting the iPhone to be dead but received a pleasant surprise. “There’s nothing about the phone that doesn’t work, Carriere told CTV News. “It’s amazing.”
30 days in a lake vastly exceeds iPhone water resistance
Starting with 2016’s iPhone 7, Apple handsets have been able to survive being dropped into the water. And the depth and time they can endure submerged has increased with each successive model.
It’s not clear what iOS device the Canadian has. But a month at the bottom of a lake is undoubtedly more than it was designed for, whichever it is. The current iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max have a rating of IP68. This gives them up to 30 minutes of protection against water to a maximum depth of 6 meters.
Instead of lasting 30 minutes, Carriere’s went for 30 days.
Her’s isn’t the first Apple device to survive a surprisingly long time under the waves. A few years ago, an iPhone X survived 8 hours in the ocean. Plus an iPhone 8 made it through two weeks in the Thames. And these are just a couple of examples.
