Many smartphones are designed to be water resistant to some extent. Depending on the standards they meet, we consider that a phone is indeed capable of remaining submerged for a longer or shorter time.
Although the iPhone 12 is only designed to be able to stay for a maximum of thirty minutes at a depth of six meters, it could be thatits immersion capabilities are in reality much greater than what is advertised on paper. This is what reportsAppleInsider, who received testimony from a man named Lee.
He cleans a river and finds an iPhone
While he was in the midst of implementing an eco-responsible civic initiative in northern California, Lee made an unexpected discovery. On November 10, he went to the banks of the Stanislaus River, with the aim of cleaning it. The objective behind this initiative is laudable, the Stanislaus River is inhabited by an endangered species of fish, Chinook salmon.
While cleaning, Lee finds a phone covered in algae, among the rocks. After cleaning it, he realizes it's an iPhone 12, then lets it dry for a few days.
It lights up!
On November 16, six days after his discovery, Lee decided without much conviction to plug in the phone, and against all odds, he managed to turn it on! He then consulted its contents in order to have more information on his find of the day. The iPhone 12 he found was actually not protected by a password, which also allowed him to realize that the phone had been submerged for around three months. This is thanks to a video of the river it contained, dating from September 6.
Lee of course planned to contact people in the phone's directory in order to return it to its owner.
Even though in this story, the phone does not appear to have suffered any damage, it is not recommended to submerge your iPhone underwater. Apple does not cover this type of damage since a simple fall can affect the waterproofness of smartphone joints.
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