iPhones aren't the most water, but Michelle Gandrum from Knox, Pennsylvania, United States, has a different opinion, as he found his phone submerged in a frozen lake after about a year.
Gundrum lost his iPhone 4 while fishing on a frozen lake in March 2015, when his device slipped out of his pocket and fell into a hole in the ice.
The unfortunate user tells BuzzFeed News, “It was -25 degrees so me and two friends went ice fishing. We were sitting in our folding chairs and when I took a bite out of a cereal bar my phone slipped. Instead of falling into the snow, it hit the edge of the hole and fell in. I caught one fish, a blue gill, but in the end the fishing wasn’t worth it.”
In the summer the ice on the lake melted and by September the lake dried up due to problems with its sealing. The iPhone was found by a treasure hunter who was using a metal detector to locate lost objects on its bottom that had fallen from the region's boats. He reports that he found an iPhone under about 15 centimeters of mud.
He took the device to his house, cleaned it, left it in rice for one or two days and then connected it to a charger. As if by magic, the phone worked, so he looked at the contact list to find the owner's number.
Gandrum, who had meanwhile purchased an iPhone 6s, was using a special protective case for the iPhone 4 and that may have been one of the reasons the device survived for a long time in water. Larger iPhones are not water-resistant, and only the iPhone 7 has an IP67 rating and is specifically designed to withstand certain water conditions.
The fisherman will clean the iPhone 4 more carefully and after he does a maintenance and any minor repairs needed, then give it to his mother.
