Man fishes dropped iPhone from canal using its MagSafe connector

By

MagSafe charger for iPhone
Handy for charging. Handier for retrieving your dropped iPhone from a canal in Germany.
Photo: Apple

What do you do when you drop your iPhone 12 Pro in a canal and can’t find it? Simple: You take advantage of one of its neat new features to fish it out of the murky depths.

That’s what Twitter user and developer Frederik Riedel recently did — crafting a fishing rod with magnet that allowed him to latch on to the MagSafe charging magnets on the back of the device. Impressively, it worked. As did the iPhone continue to do.

“Something happened tonight,” Riedel reported on Twitter. “A friend of mine dropped his iPhone 12 Pro in the canal in Berlin. It disappeared in the mud. He waded through the 3ft deep water. No way to find it. But he found a Nintendo Switch instead. We built a magnetic fishing rod and [caught] it!!!!! MagSafe ftw.”

Aside from wondering why the good people of Germany appear to be treating this one canal as a wishing well into which you have to throw pricey tech items, it’s great to hear that Riedel was able to retrieve the iPhone. The fact that it works is also, obviously, good news.

Apple has been making its iPhones gradually more water-resistant over the years. The iPhone 12 hold an IP68 rating, meaning that it should be able to survive submersion of almost 20 feet in water for half an hour. This applies to the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max.

In all likelihood, it should be able to survive a bit longer than this. Last year, we wrote about how an iPhone 8 was dropped in a river and stayed there for two months. After it was fished out (although no MagSafe connector in this case to help), it turned out to still work. For context, the iPhone 8 has an IP rating of IP67, meaning that it should be able to withstand taking on water damage up to 3 feet of fresh water for a maximum of 30 minutes.

Do you have any daring iPhone rescue stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.

Via: Apple Insider

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.