It wasn’t long ago that dropping your smartphone from even the shortest tables would send a sense of dread rushing through your body. Unsurprisingly, small objects covered in glass are relatively fragile, but in recent years, the phone makers have made major strides when it comes to the durability of the hardware. The latest proof of just how sturdy modern phones have become is one of the craziest lost phone stories we’ve ever heard.
CTV News reports that Angie Carriere was celebrating her 50th birthday with an ice fishing trip on Waskesiu Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada when she accidentally dropped her iPhone 11 Pro. It sunk right to the bottom of the lake, but determined to get it back, Carriere returned to the lake with her friends three times over the course of the next month in an attempt to find and retrieve her phone. On the third trip, with a fish finder in tow, they finally spotted the phone, plucked it with a magnet attached to a fishing line, and pulled it to the surface.
That alone would have been quite the accomplishment, but when she dried it off and plugged it into the charger, she noticed that the screensaver appeared. In fact, “there’s nothing about the phone that doesn’t work,” Carriere says. All of her photos are still on the phone, including those that she took during the fishing trip where she lost her iPhone in the first place. Carriere was prepared to replace her phone, but against all odds, she won’t have to.
“iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 4 meters up to 30 minutes),” Apple’s official support website states. Leaving an iPhone 11 Pro in a pool for half an hour may be enough to cause permanent damage, but Carriere’s iPhone 11 Pro spent the better part of a month at the bottom of a freezing lake and was no worse for wear. It’s a good thing, too, because Apple explicitly says that “liquid damage is not covered under warranty,” so she would have been on the hook for a new phone.
The timing of this story is so perfect for Apple that I’m actually a bit suspicious. If you’ve been watching any of March Madness, chances are that you’ve seen the following commercial at least half a dozen times:
Apple has been hyping up the iPhone 12’s Ceramic Shield ever since the phone was announced last fall, and though the sunken phone from the story above is an iPhone 11 Pro, both the news report and the commercial showcase just how durable the iPhone has become. So, whether you drop your iPhone on the sidewalk or toss it to the bottom of a frozen lake, there’s a decent chance that your iPhone will still be in one piece.
