iPhone 11 Pro survives for 30 days at bottom of icy lake

By Trevor Mogg March 25, 2021

There can’t be many things that would survive 30 days stuck at the bottom of an icy lake. But an iPhone 11 Pro defied the odds when it did just that.

Canadian Angie Carriere recently decided to celebrate her 50th birthday with a spot of ice fishing in Waskesiu Lake, some 280 miles east of Edmonton.

At one point during the fishing expedition she had her phone resting on her knee when a gust of wind caught the tent she was in. As she went to grab the tent, the phone slid off her knee and fell straight into the lake.

Speaking to CTV (below) about the unfortunate incident, Carriere admitted that shortly before her phone disappeared into the icy water, she’d been warning her daughter to be careful with her own handset.

iPhone spends weeks at the bottom of frozen Sask. lake and it still works

At first, Carriere had no desire to rescue the phone from the freezing lake. Later, however, she had a change of heart, seeing its retrieval as a challenge.

Two visits to the lake to search for her iPhone 11 Pro ended without any breakthrough, with the phone apparently lost forever. But on a third visit, Carriere and her friends managed to locate it.

With the iPhone 11 Pro in their sights, they attached a magnet to a fishing line and lowered it into the lake in an effort to grab the device and haul it up from the lake bed. The plan worked, and Carriere had her phone back.

Amazingly, after charging it, it powered up.

“There’s nothing about the phone that doesn’t work,” Carriere said, adding, “It’s amazing.”

Apple says the iPhone 11 Pro, which came out in 2019, has a rating of IP68, meaning it can handle a maximum depth of 4 meters of water for up to 30 minutes. Clearly, it’s not expected to survive 30 days at the bottom of a freezing cold lake, but according to Carrier’s adventure, it did.

The story brings to mind a similar incident from last month when a man jumped into an icy harbor in a desperate bid to rescue his phone.

Despite being submerged for several hours (the phone, not the man!), the iPhone XS still worked fine. But then, if Carriere’s phone survived for a month, what’s a few hours in similar conditions?

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