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Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal
- rurban 5y agoOhne Fischköcher sehr schwer
- itronitron 5y agoSomeone should market a selfie-stick that includes a small aquarium net attachment ===~~~~~{}
- _ph_ 5y agoThat makes one think whether there is a market of a magsafe attachment which can be used as a "hook" to grab phones in situations like this. A proper attachment (with some anti-skid surface) could grab the phone much stronger than a plain magnet. In any case, they could have used a magsafe charger as the hook, that should also work well.
- pvaldes 5y agoCan't fall to mention that a fishing net rod, even one hand made with cheap materials, would had been a great helper in this case.
- brunojppb 5y agoNew product idea: iPhone magsafe fishing rod
- pvaldes 5y agopreorder now your fishphone
- yosito 5y agoI've gotta give them props for the persistence. I would have just given up and bought a new iPhone. It's impressive that the iPhone survived the whole ordeal, without even turning off. And the amount of stuff they found makes me wonder why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby.
- globular-toast 5y agoIt's become quite popular in the UK. People frequently pull out guns or munitions like grenades and cause streets to be closed by the police. I'm not sure if they ever pull anything useful.
- hybridtupel 5y agoIndeed it is [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing
- murkle 5y agoIt's very dangerous especially in France due to old ordinance. Google magnet fishing
- crackercrews 5y ago"Ordinance" is legislation. "Ordnance" is the explosive stuff. Old ordinance can also be troublesome, but is rarely deadly.
- abrowne 5y agoAt least in jurisdictions that have abolished capital punishment.
- scrollaway 5y agoI'm not GP but as a non-native speaker, thanks for the tip! I never realized :)
- jkubicek 5y agoI'm a native english speaker, and I also never realized those were two different words.
- dcminter 5y agoThe classic usage for Brits is the 'ordnance survey' (maps) which originate in the need for accurate maps when calculating angles for artillery! Also, while I'm a native speaker who does know this one I think it's obscure enough that most don't. In fact I suspect it's obscure enough that the mis-spelling will replace it eventually anyway. Incidentally the products of magnet fishing often turn up on Reddit's /r/whatisthisthing sub. You also see quite a few munitions. Often enough, in fact, that they have a munitions bot that warns people to contact the authorities (and not, e.g., twist the end to see if it comes off...)
- sjm 5y agoWhat a great excuse to give to those ignored Tinder matches.
- 101008 5y agoOr a great conversation starter!
- superjan 5y agoHe was lucky. A family member spilled water over her beloved 6 months old iPhone 12, it leaked in and caused stains on the display.
- orhmeh09 5y agoThat seems like pretty bad luck! In the early months of the pandemic I washed my iPhone 11 daily with no ill effects.
- stu2b50 5y agoIt was likely damaged. A fall, for instance, can damage a smartphone enough to break its seal while being almost imperceptible to humans. Making electronics water resistant is always a very tricky endeavor.
- superjan 5y agoOh probably. But a lot of people drop their phone once in a while. I just read about a guy dropping it into a Berlin canal! The thing is that if it dropped once you can’t rely on your phone being waterproof anymore.
- swiley 5y ago>without water damage IME you have to wait a few weeks to decide that one unfortunately. (on the other hand, if my iphone still worked I probably wouldn't have been motivated to get things like power management working on my pinephone.)
- magoon 5y agoI’m surprised to hear that bluetooth, GPS, and cellular don’t work in water. I wonder what’s the science behind this.
- kajecounterhack 5y agoRadio is part of the EM spectrum. EM waves (including light) decay under water at an exponential rate due to absorption by the medium. So data transmission underwater must rely instead on mechanical waves (sound). This is why underwater robots mostly use tethers, otherwise you couldn't control them very well (RC control would stop working at a very shallow depth). Note: why are folks downvoting an honest question?
- potatoman22 5y agoDon't EM waves decay at an exponential rate in all mediums?
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Note: why are folks downvoting an honest question?" I suppose because of Friday.
- marche 5y ago> (including light) I remember being told in some physics class that visible light is actually the radiation which penetrates the most, and that indeed this may be the very reason why it's visible: eyes were developed when life was still aquatic, therefore they evolved to be sensitive to the range of frequencies that could reach them.
- Freestyler_3 5y agoHow much volume of air must be inside a standard phone these days to make it buoyant?
- mgerullis 5y agoThere’s this anecdote of Steve Jobs saw a prototype for an iPod and dropped it in a water tank in order to proof his engineers that they could make it smaller, because it had bubbles of air coming out. https://tekdeeps.com/steve-jobs-threw-an-ipod-into-a-fish-tank-to-prove-he-was-right/ https://tekdeeps.com/steve-jobs-threw-an-ipod-into-a-fish-ta...
- teddyh 5y agoThat’s an old urban legend which has been told about many people and companies.
- widforss 5y agoThe calculation pretty much boils down to changing the phone's weight in kg to a volume in l.
- fnoof 5y agoAn iPhone 12 weighs 164g [1], so, through the magic of the metric system, it needs to displace a minimum of 164ml of water to float. The iPhone has an external volume of 14.67cm * 7.15cm * 0.74cm = 77.62cm^3 = 77.62ml. So it would need to be about 2x the volume to float. [1] https://www.apple.com/iphone-12/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-12/specs/
- teachingassist 5y agoiPhones 7 through 11 felt increasingly easy to destroy with the slightest touch - not so the iPhone 12.
- Veen 5y agoThey're easier to drop, but I haven't found mine to be excessively fragile. My iPhone 8 Plus is four-years old and has been dropped many times. It has few chips off the corners but is otherwise going strong.
- crackercrews 5y agoJust because of the rounded edges that made it slippery?
- Infernal 5y agoInteresting. I skipped from an iPhone 6 to an 11 Pro, and when I pick up my old 6 now it is both so thin and light as to feel very fragile, whereas the 11 Pro has a dense, hefty, solid feel in comparison. I have briefly used someone else's iPhone 12 and it didn't feel any different from my 11 Pro, to me. YMMV and all that.
- supernova87a 5y agoI just find the German text message entertaining. The words and syntax are great. "Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst" Geplumpst! Sounds exactly the right word for what just happened. "Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen" Couldn't we all.
- thih9 5y agoCould someone translate?
- arbitrary_name 5y agoI would say the best translation to English is 'plopped' - it's a sort of whimsical or even comical way of saying it fell in.
- iso1210 5y agoFrom the context and the word "Bier", "I'd like to grab a beer" perhaps
- 1986 5y ago"My phone just plopped into the Landwehr Canal." "Hahaha and now what" "Great question" "Now I could use a beer."
- merlincorey 5y ago> Geplumpst Basically means something fell or as Google Translate says "flopped" -- however, GP seems to be excited over the apparent onomatopoeia in the word because it evokes the sound of something falling in water. > "Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst" This essentially says "My cellphone fell in the canal!" but with the delicious "geplumpst" word sound. > "Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen" This exclaims "I could use a beer now".
- stronglikedan 5y ago> Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst My cell phone just fell into the Landwehr Canal > Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen I could use a beer now (Google's translations, not mine)
- psychomugs 5y agoCigarette in mouth on the uptake adds to the absurd coolness of the ordeal.
- 1970-01-01 5y ago#magnetfishing for more of it
- shoto_io 5y ago> At this point, we really have to give props to the iPhone Hardware Engineering team: We were able to recover the device in perfect mint condition and without water damage. The new Ceramic Shield Glass really held up to the strong forces of the magnet and junk in the canal, and the IP68 water resistance is mind-blowing. And last but not least: MagSafe seems to be a perfect tool to recover lost iPhones from the water.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoLR BLE (900 MHz) is interesting and the band I worked with more-so than 2.4 GHz because its range was far superior. What we need is Tile Ultra or AirTag+: Underwater edition using 1.85 or 3.75 MHz. Or sonic pinging. :)
- tantalor 5y ago> something happened that nobody of us would have imagined... this was the missing iPhone What a strange phrase, considering that was the goal.
- jdiez17 5y agoYeah, but I think most people would think there would be a very very low chance of succeeding in this crazy endeavour.
- deluxeroyale 5y agoMy GF dropped one of her airpod pro’s in a storm drain. I taped some rare earth magnets (extracted from some old e-junk) onto a foldable ruler. The airpods end snapped onto the magnets and I fished it up!
- brailsafe 5y agoYou can also buy earth magnets at local woodworking stores. They're super fun!
- julienfr112 5y agoI'm confused. I thougt iphone where made of aluminium, that is not attracted by a magnet ...
- Wevah 5y agoNewer iPhone models have magnets in them to attach to various chargers and accessories.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoIt's also not uncommon to stick a metal disc on the back of the phone for magnetic vehicle dashboard mounts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kokey 5y agoI'm happy for them. An FPV drone of mine bounced into a canal recently and the motors get attached to magnets relatively easily, but I couldn't ever find it again even while fishing for hours with a large magnet fishing magnet.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoInterestingly enough, when I lived in Brussels people used magnets to fish stuff out of the canals on a regular basis :-) lots of "interesting" things are attracted to magnets. That they could snag an iPhone was pretty amazing. I would be inclined to fish for other phones, perhaps the folks who live on canal boats could 'trawl' a magnet line :-) (It's Friday, okay?)
- vonWegen 5y ago50% chance that this story was staged... ... there is a pretty "hip" German pop song, that makes fun about dropping an iPhone into the Landwehrkanal... https://www.lyrics.com/track/33176002/Von+Wegen+Lisbeth/Ch%C3%A9rie https://www.lyrics.com/track/33176002/Von+Wegen+Lisbeth/Ch%C...
- DrSiemer 5y agoThat song is 4 years old, it's not exactly hip and happening
- tj-teej 5y agoMaybe this is a naive question: but I remember growing up there was a hard and fast rule that you could not have magnets anywhere near your technology, is this not the case anymore? Was it only floppy-disks and disk based tech which had issues?
- thirsteh 5y agoYeah, there are not many moving parts now. It messed with read heads in HDDs as well as CRT monitors. I still get nervous if there are magnets around cause I don't know how they work.
- DavidAdams 5y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miracles-fucking-magnets-how-do-they-work https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miracles-fucking-magnets-how-...
- xchaotic 5y ago“ The best thing is, the screen turned on immediately, delivering missed Tinder notifications, without any damage.” I hope the guy finally gets some action - I mean he’s got iPhone 12 Pro with a magnet. Must work on the chickas too, right? ;)
- dctoedt 5y agoI hope the guy's immunizations are up to date, given that he initially jumped into the canal and tried diving down for his phone.
- Brajeshwar 5y agoOff Topic but I learnt something new today from this article. Instead of just tapping the "Find my Phone" icon on Apple Watch, if you keep it pressed, it also flashes the LED light along with the sound on your iPhone.
- pabs3 5y ago> Bluetooth, GPS, and Cellular Connections don‘t work in water unfortunately. Does any radio work in water?