iPhone survives and still works perfectly despite spending 33 days underwater at beach

A man who dropped his iPhone into the sea off Hawaii was shocked to discover that it actually still worked 33 days later when he eventually got it back.

In fact, it even still played the video that he was recording on it at the time he dropped it into the water.

Zach Siggelkow was out kayaking for the first time outside of Minnesota, and therefore wasn’t quite used to the waves that you can encounter out in the ocean off Waikiki.

So, as he was trying to record a video of some aeroplanes going overhead he was caught unawares and lost his iPhone 14 over the side of his boat.

This took place on the last day of his holiday, and he had to return back to Minnesota without his phone.

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He explained: “And so I was recording some of the planes coming over, you know, Air Force planes coming over the top, and it was pretty neat just to capture that.

“You can see a bigger wave come and I’m like in my head like, ‘Ohhh! Here we go!’

“And then you kind of tip over it.

“At that point, I was like trying to scramble to find my paddle, but I had my phone in my hand, too.”

Siggelkow must have assumed that the machine was totally gone forever, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

It was found by Dr Karl Brookins, a retired fisheries scientist who likes going for a dive around the area.

He said: “The bottom is, you know, pretty uniform out there and sandy with some rocks.

“And it’s like, that’s a square thing!

“And there was a pair of sunglasses sitting right next to it.”

Dr Brookins eventually decided to check out whether it still worked, even though he had his doubts.

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“I didn’t expect this one to come back on because it was it was starting to get too crusty," he said.

However, after keeping it in a bag with salt and rice to get rid of the moisture for a week, Dr Brookins turned it on.

To his surprise, it actually worked.

“Charged it up and turned it on, and there it said, Dec. 21!

“I found it on Jan. 23,” Dr Brookins added.

Apple reckons that their iPhone 14 models are good for submersion up to six metres for 30 minutes.

While the water this phone went into was only a few feet deep, it was there for 33 days.

Siggelkow was clearly taken aback after getting contacted about his missing phone.

“I was in shock. One, that he found it obviously. Two, that he was able to log in to the phone, recover the video and find my email address,” he said.

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Siggelkow was even more shocked when Dr Brookins agreed to send it back to him free of charge.

His reasoning was: “I just send it away. It’s good Aloha.

“You know, if he wants to send me the cost of shipping it to them, that’s fine.”

Well, he’ll get that back, along with a bit extra.

Siggelkow concluded: “Check is in the mail for him, you know, a few extra bucks on top of the shipping and handling there.

“So, hopefully, he gets that soon!”