An iPhone has survived a “bath” in the English Channel after it was lost by a boater off the coast of England. While Apple was touting the water resistance of its iPhone 13, a boater inadvertently tested their device in harsher conditions.
User Van_D00m wrote on Reddit, “After 5 minutes of paddling, the phone sank to the bottom. (7) Several hours later, until the tide went out, it opened up again on its own. I found it, and remarkably, after more than 5 hours in the sea, it was undamaged.”
The time scale is very unclear; the iPhone was reportedly submerged for five hours, while there were seven hours between the accident and the tide receding. It is also unclear what the user meant by “it opened up again on its own”.
What is most likely in this part of the narrative is that once the tide went out, the Find My feature started working again.
But there is still the question of where this happened. iPad’s Find My screenshot mentions that Gingers iPhone is located in the North Atlantic Ocean. However, the map appears to mark the location of user Van_D00m, clearly showing the English Channel and British coastal towns. The user appears to be about 20 miles from the seaside resort of Brighton.
The iPhone survived for 5 to 7 hours completely intact, which is very impressive. But this is far from the longest time an iPhone has been submerged in water. In August 2021, it was reported that a user’s iPhone fell into the River Wye in Gloucestershire, England. It was salvaged and reopened in June of the following year.
