A diver recovered an iPhone 11 from the bottom of a lake in British Columbia, one that managed to survive submerged for almost 6 months.
Chilliwack free divers Clayton Helkenberg and his wife Heather have a hobby to dive to the bottom of lakes to find lost objects and clean up trash. In a video released Thursday, he revealed that he discovered an iPhone at the bottom of Lake Harrison.
While exploring the lake bed, Heather noticed the iPhone among the sediments, while Clayton found a flip phone, reports CBC. While Clayton’s discovery was severely damaged, the discovery of Heather’s iPhone was in much better condition.
“I took it home, cleaned the dirt off it and started right, so it was pretty amazing,” Clayton said. Apart from problems with the microphone and speakers, the iPhone has largely come out unscathed.
After removing the SIM and inserting it into another device to contact the original owner, it was returned to Vancouver resident Fatemeh Ghodsi. The iPhone was reportedly thrown away during a boat ride in September and contained photos of Ghodsi just before launch.
“I was in a situation where I kind of lost my balance and dropped it into the water,” Ghodsi said. Park staff told him it was impossible to find the iPhone in the water, forcing Ghodsi to leave empty-handed.
Ghodsi later replaced the iPhone with another mobile device.
Upon receiving a text from her old number, the iPhone owner thought they were friends joking with her, but was later persuaded to visit Chilliwack to retrieve her smartphone.
“I was in complete shock, initially at first,” she continued. “It was kind of like a zombie phone coming back to me, because I would make peace with the fact that it’s gone.”
The water resistance of iPhones has led to numerous other reports over the years, in which iPhones are dumped into bodies of water and then recovered.
In February 2020, Disney officials returned an iPhone to the owner after divers lifted it from Seven Seas Lagoon two months after it was dropped. A year later, in February 2021, a man jumped into Victoria Inner Harbor in British Columbia to retrieve his iPhone XS from the frozen water.