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Functioning iPhone returned to owner after six months at bottom of lake
- drglitch 6y agoI took an iPhone X into a 3 foot deep swimming pool to take an underwater selfie (don’t ask, not the proudest moment) and it promptly died - apparently if you drop the phone, the water tight seal has a tendency to fail “silently”. Caveat Emptor :) Thankfully, AppleCare was in effect and it got replaced for a small deductible. Great to see gadgets standing up to being used as opposed to needing to be cradled and soothed all the time!
- mcbutterbunz 6y agoI took my phone out of the case today and noticed how dirty it, and the case was. I simply washed it off in the sink and it was nice and clean. I couldn’t help but think this was such a strange thing to do but also so natural. Also, I’ve done underwater selfies too. It’s a lot of fun!
- nguyenhailong 6y agoi totally agree
- divbzero 6y agoJust remember to let the phone dry fully before charging (unless you’re charging wirelessly of course). Moisture while charging gradually damages both cable and port.
- jorvi 6y agoiPhones are actually able to detect this and will give a pop-up saying moisture has been detected in the charging port and charging has been disabled out of safety concerns. It even shows you a bypass button for emergencies!
- johnwalkr 6y agoBut don't use soap, which reduces the surface tension and lets water get past seals. At the start of the pandemic I used soapy water on my iphone 11 and the faceid sensor broke immediatly. Apple replaced the phone, though.
- antihero 6y agoSame, went swimming with my iPhone 7. It never fully died but the camera clouded up and it totally freaked out to the point of being near unuseable. AppleCare+ ,£70 and replaced in-store. I always get AppleCare+ now.
- katbyte 6y agoAppleCare and a store to do the replace at in most major cities is one of the big reasons I stick with apple
- rjzzleep 6y agoOn the other hand I have a Samsung Active 2 watch which is IPX68 rated and has a swimming mode for a pool swim yesterday, in which it died. It lasted a total of 1 year and 4 months. It also has an ECG sensor that died for most people(myself included) before Samsung released the ECG mode(one year later).
- Toutouxc 6y agoOh, I also have that, I shower with it and took it swimming a few times, no problem. So it's still working and I can fully enjoy the zero apps it has, because no one cares about Tizen, the continuous heartbeat measurement that stopped measuring after the last big update and the ongoing lack of ECG mode that I'm not allowed to use because I don't own a Samsung phone. And people wonder why Apple owns the high-end smartwatch market.
- permo-w 6y agoI once dropped my SE into a pond while I was fishing. I didn’t notice until I actually saw the thing at the bottom of the pond. It was probably down there at least 5 minutes. I fished it out and it worked completely fine. I don’t think SEs were even marketed as waterproof. They still had the headphone jack, which I think was the weakspot
- rixrax 6y agoMy SE on the other hand did not survive ~ 5 minute dip into the shallow end of the YMCA pool. But Xs has been great in this regard. And with this pandemic, I regularly wash it with soap and water.
- oyashirochama 6y agoChlorine can damage the seals especially of something not actually rated as water resistant. Soap is also a weakness and can cause water to bypass the barrier due to water tension lowering.
- asdff 6y agoI took my iphone 5 with me when I fell into a lake in college. The screen was previously all cracked up too. Worked fine still somehow.
- wodenokoto 6y agoBeing waterproof and being waterproof against salt water or chlorinated water are different things. > (don’t ask, not the proudest moment) don't be ashamed - that had the potential to be a super cool picture.
- dartharva 6y ago> Ghodsi said the microphone is broken and the speaker sounds weird, but everything else is in perfect shape; the battery health is still at 96 per cent. What? How is the battery still at 96 percent? Did she switch her phone off before dropping it?
- moreira 6y agoBattery health, not the battery level. The battery, I'm guessing, would've been fully drained.
- dataflow 6y ago> The battery, I'm guessing, would've been fully drained. Hah. Hopefully water didn't get into the battery in the first place ;)
- oyashirochama 6y agoBatteries surprisingly last a really long time as long as they are COMPLETELY drained (modern lithium has about 10-25% left after drain). Low cycling can make them last even longer in terms of decades expected, if you don't cycle the battery and keep it around 60-70%.
- tomc1985 6y agoAfter a few years, my old iPhone SE couldn't last for more than an hour of heavy use, or half a day mostly idle. iOS reported battery health at 90%... yeah, 90% my ass. That battery was nearly dead.
- macintux 6y agoArgh. Apple makes it so incredibly easy to back up contacts, photos, etc.
- xenophonf 6y agoYeah, if you buy into their ecosystem, and then you're locked into their stuff. How many online photo archive systems have gone and went in the last 10 to 15 years? Or how many end up fucking with photo quality at some point? Or lock your account with no recourse? Etc. The cloud is just someone else's computer. I'd rather vendors like Apple gave us the ability to build our own private clouds instead of locking us into theirs.
- ceejayoz 6y agoYou're not locked in, though. All my iCloud photos are also in /Users/ceejayoz/Pictures. iCloud is a backup and a way to not store ten years worth on your phone. Apple's quite happy to have you have a local copy of it all.
- aidenn0 6y agoBut it seems every year it gets a bit harder to store locally workout paying apple a monthly fee for iCloud. The UI in iTunes has stagnated while iCloud makes it super easy – for a price.
- bebop 6y agoMy wife dropped her iPhone 11 off the side of our boat (at the dock), two days later our friend dove down and found it. We let it dry out for a couple of days and it has been working perfectly since then.
- random5634 6y agoApple get's crap for gluing everything together, but this is a nice feature.
- _the_inflator 6y agoYes. And I think that the glue also is a security feature against manipulation of the parts.
- snypher 6y agoBecause someone manipulating parts couldn't glue it back together?
- oyashirochama 6y agoThe glue makes it hard to open without breaking everything else too. Also the glue IS hard to replace since its a special silicon glue, most replacements use lower quality 3M 2 sided.
- juanani 6y agoIt can be waterproof sealed without the glue. I used my Kyocera Torque (rugged) until I couldn't update it's OS. (needed updated software for work) Changed it's battery once, you could use a nickel (or a fingernail) to unlock its backside and pry it open with your fingers. Battery slipped right off. Waterproof and tougher than a Nokia. I still use it as a hammer. I am not sure the glue is that necessary for a waterproof seal, hence the crap.
- katbyte 6y ago
- p1mrx 6y ago"photos recovered from the phone show her still smiling moments before the mishap." Many believed that she would never smile again.
- bombcar 6y agoTechnically she probably wasn’t _still_ smiling as the iPhone takes Live Photos by default. :)
- FpUser 6y agoBattery at 96% after 6 month? That does not add up. Self discharge rate alone is higher I think. The average I think is 6%/month for Li-Ion. That is when completely disconnected which is not the case even if one turns power off
- fastball 6y ago> battery health
- mastazi 6y agoSomeone on another thread is suggesting she meant battery capacity (i.e. "health") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26372775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26372775
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _Microft 6y agoApple shows how much maximum capacity a device’s battery still has, compared to a new one. That’s called battery health. If battery health is 96% and the battery is charged at 50%, it holds 0.96 * 0.50 = 0.48 times the charge of a new battery, i.e. 48%. If battery health becomes too low a device’s speed can be reduced to preserve running time of the device. That’s what got Apple into problems before (“Apple is intentionally crippling devices”), see “Batterygate”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
- FpUser 6y agoYep. my bad
- imwillofficial 6y agoAnd people talk crap about iPhones.
- mhh__ 6y agoSample size of 1 though?
- imwillofficial 6y agoNot everything is a double blind study, geez.
- ekianjo 6y agoThese phones are designed to be slippery.
- dartharva 6y agoYou still can't sideload apps on them without hacks
- katbyte 6y agoNot everyone wants to do that? I’ve had an iPhone since the 4 and never cared once or have wanted to
- sumedh 6y ago> never cared once or have wanted to Would you care if you could buy the same apps 30% cheaper?
- weberer 6y agoWell apps on Android are not 30% cheaper than on iPhone, so there goes that hypothesis. However, I would really love it so there can be a FOSS repository on the iPhone like F-Droid.
- m463 6y agoI learned a lot about waterproofing years ago when I had an underwater (film) camera. You had to be able to open the camera to get the film in and out, so there was a gasket around the door. You had to be really careful - you had to keep it supple and clean. One hair or bit of pocket fuzz and you could destroy your camera (and film). You had to wash the camera with fresh water after using it. And depth mattered. I figured that the digital age would bring cameras that were hermetically sealed, but that didn't seem to happen - they still seemed to put doors on cameras.
- petertodd 6y agoA big problem with hermetic seals is that if they aren't truly hermetic, water gets in and fogs up the lenses on the inside. If there's a hole that can be opened in the case, you at least have a decent chance of being able to dry out the insides (possibly with extra heat).
- akkartik 6y agoLink on the same page: iPhone rescued from ice wall https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/group-effort-recovered-phone-lost-in-cape-breton-ice-wall-1.5046044 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/group-effort-reco.... Complete with sappy poem. I wonder if there's a whole genre here of feel-good stories involving iPhones and Canadians.
- jdurham 6y agoWashed off my iPhone Xs for 2 seconds and the FaceID stopped working. Apparently this is pretty common :(
- Animats 6y agoThis is progress. If they're going to sell a sealed unit, it ought to be watertight. I expected that by now, phones would be totally sealed with no connectors. We have wireless charging and wireless headphones. SIM cards remain a problem, but there's probably some way to replace those with photographing a QR code or something. My own phone is from Caterpillar.[1] Of course it's waterproof. [1] https://youtu.be/pE8xN7kCUXk https://youtu.be/pE8xN7kCUXk
- stu2b50 6y agoProgress? Flagship phones have had IP68 water resistance for the past few years now. This is not like a surprising or novel feature of the iPhone.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoThe more recent iPhones and Samsung phones, and some others, have eSIM support - no physical card required. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM List of devices with ESIM support https://esim2fly.com/esim-supported-devices/ https://esim2fly.com/esim-supported-devices/
- ev1 6y agoAT&T is fucking terrible about this and gives you physical eSIM cards. They refuse to give these to prepaid customers. I've gone to an AT&T corporate store nuemrous times and get "sorry we've run out of esims" and they charge for them. The site itself is also out of them frequently. They are QR codes on cardboard
- ardit33 6y agoMy niece found in Porto Rico an iPhoneX, near the beach, about 1m underwater. It worked, but screen was locked and no way to find who the owner was. We could get the SIM card. When they got back, my brother in law went to Verizon and told them to find who the owner was, and to call him. It was an Indian couple from New Jersey on their honey-moon vacation , and there were very happy to get their phone back, as they had all their honey moon pictures there. The estimate was that the phone was in water (about 1m of depth) for at least 3-4 days before my niece had found it. So, it was a good story, also that the iphoneX, when new, can survive in shallow waters. Overtime, the 'water proof' coating does smear out, and eventually give in. I wouldn't swim with one, especially if it is an older phone.
- onedognight 6y agoI had the exact same experience. We found an iPhone in 1-2m of ocean in Mexico. It had been there a week, we found out after calling Verizon with the SIM and being put in contact with the owner. Someone in our group dropped it off in Portland on their way home.
- jimmyed 6y agoBy Indian you mean from the Republic of India and not native Americans? I am guessing do because of New Jersey.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoIn 2013, I got my iPhone 4S treated with the "Nano" protective coating from Liquipel. Not only could it survive being underwater, it could function underwater too.
- fortran77 6y agoWhy didn't she back up her photos?
- RegnisGnaw 6y agoThe data plans are crap in Canada. Most people have it setup to only backup photos on WiFi.
- madengr 6y agoWe do wash freshly soldered PCB in a dishwasher. It’s got DI water and some other chemicals, but water nonetheless. Water is not the death of electronics.
- aetherspawn 6y agoI have always washed my iPhones in the sink (careful to run water over the screen and back, but not directly into the charging ports or speakers). I have done this for my iPhone 6, 8 and XR over the last 5-6 years and it has never caused any damage. I used to wash the iPhone 6 in the sink nearly daily to remove the oils/sticky from the screen after eating lunch^. In my experience, you don't have to be extremely careful, you just need to be mindful that if you run the water jet continuously into a hole then it will eventually bust through... no matter what Apple marketing says. ^My workmates used to always tell me off for doing this, and I would explain that I've been doing it for years.
- stephenr 6y ago> I used to wash the iPhone 6 in the sink nearly daily to remove the oils/sticky from the screen after eating lunch^. > My workmates used to always tell me off for doing this, and I would explain that I've been doing it for years. Maybe they were telling you off for using your iPhone as a plate and/or utensils to eat lunch with?
- aetherspawn 6y agoI would usually read HN or Reddit whilst eating lunch (typically finger food like a sandwich or pie).
- superkuh 6y agoIn the near future we may be able to playfully push each other into bodies of water once again. It was such a shame that went away with cell phones.
- nsomaru 6y agoMy childhood was contemporaneous with the development of mobile phones. We also had a pool at home... “Nooo....” changed to “my phone, my phone!”
- Scoundreller 6y agoPart of the reason why so many beer cans and bottles are found it because of how illegal it is to drink on a boat without a bathroom and bedroom. And criminal to be drunk and in command of your canoe/kayak (or even floatie depending on how the judge feels). So people sink the evidence.
- stanmancan 6y agoMy sister lost her iPhone 4 back in the day. Months later it popped up in Find My iPhone and they tracked it down. Turns out she lost it at the beach, and it spent months there, buried under a bit of sand. A kid and mom found it with a metal detector and brought it home to charge to try and find the owner. Still worked just fine.
- vagrantJin 6y agoLike Jesus asked Pontius Pilate, "Why does your phone need to be waterproof? Does the roman republic need to take selfies and make phone-calls underwater?" "No", Pontius replied "Romans might go swimming with it."