A diver recovered an iPhone 11 from the bottom of a lake in British Columbia, which managed to survive submerged for almost 6 months.
Free divers from Chilliwack Clayton Helkenberg and his wife Heather have a hobby of diving into the bottom of lakes to find lost items and clean up the trash. In a video released on 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. Although Clayton’s discovery was severely damaged, Heather’s iPhone discovery was in much better shape.
“I took it home, cleaned up the dirt and lit it immediately, so it was amazing,” said Clayton. In addition to a broken microphone and speaker problems, the iPhone came out pretty much unscathed from the ordeal.
After ejecting the SIM and placing it on another device to contact the original owner, it was returned to Vancouver resident Fatemeh Ghodsi. The iPhone was reportedly dropped during a boat trip in September and contained pictures of Ghodsi just before the launch.
“I was in a situation where I lost my balance and dropped into the water,” said Ghodsi. Staff at the park told her it was impossible to find the iPhone in the water, forcing Ghodsi to leave empty-handed.
Subsequently, Ghodsi replaced the iPhone with another mobile device.
Upon receiving a message from her former number, the owner of the iPhone thought they were friends playing with her, but was later convinced to visit Chilliwack to retrieve her smartphone.
“Initially, I was in total shock,” she continued. “It was like a zombie phone came back to me, because I would be totally at peace if it was gone.”
The iPhones’ water resistance has led to several other reports over the years, in which iPhones are thrown into bodies of water and later recovered.
In February 2020, Disney employees returned an iPhone to the owner after divers picked it up at the Seven Seas Lagoon, two months after it was abandoned. A year later, in February 2021, a man jumped at Victoria Inner Harvour in British Columbia to retrieve his iPhone XS from the icy water.