iPhone 11 Fished Out of B.C. Lake, Still Works After 6 Months Underwater

Image: Aquatic Monkey on YouTube

An Apple iPhone 11 was recently fished out of British Columbia’s Harrison Lake by free divers Clayton Helkenberg and his wife Heather, with the phone remaining in fully-working condition and returned to its owner, reports CBC News.

Clayton and Heather are free divers from Chilliwack who spend their spare time cleaning up the 279m deep Harrison Lake in British Columbia, and document their progress on their YouTube channel ‘Aquatic Monkey’.

The free diving couple’s adventures often include the odd smartphone or GoPro find at the bottom of the lake, but on this rare occasion, the phone simply worked as soon as Clayton tried turning it on at home.

“I took it home, cleaned the dirt off of it and it just turned right on, so it was pretty amazing”, said the free diver.

The iPhone performs beautifully in drop tests and even though iPhones are inherently well-waterproofed, the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 are known to simply excel at underwater endurance. Even so, just turning on after spending 6 months at the bottom of a lake is just something else.

This particular iPhone 11 belonged to Vancouver resident Fatemeh Ghodsi, who was understandably skeptical when Clayton texted her to inform her that he is in possession of the phone she lost in Harrison Lake six months ago.

Ghodsi originally dropped the phone in the water back in September while riding bumper boats in Lake Harrison. “I was in a situation where I kind of lost balance and dropped it in the water”, she said.

One flabbergasted trip to Chilliwack later, however, Ghodsi now has the iPhone 11 she had already made peace with losing back, and that too in full working condition. She was able to get back full access to your photos, contacts and more.

“I was in complete shock, initially to start with. It was kind of like a zombie phone coming back to me, because I’d totally made peace with it being gone”, she added.

Again, this goes to show the awesome waterproofing of Apple’s iPhones, which we’ve already seen in underwater tests. It’s also a good reminder to have some sort of backup plan in place, specifically with iCloud, so you can rest assured if you lose your phone, you won’t lose all your precious photos and data.