iPhone 11 reunited with owner after spending 6 months in a lake

A diver has 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 wife Heather have a hobby of diving to the bottom of lakes to find lost items and clear rubbish. In a video released on Thursday, he revealed he had discovered an iPhone at the bottom of Harrison Lake.

On exploring the lake bed, Heather noticed the iPhone amongst sediment, while Clayton found a flip phone, reports CBC. While Clayton's find was severely damaged, Heather's iPhone discovery was in far better condition.

"I took it home, cleaned the dirt off of it, and it just turned right on, so it was pretty amazing," said Clayton. Aside from a broken microphone and speaker issues, the iPhone emerged largely unscathed from the ordeal.

After ejecting the SIM and putting it into another device to contact the original owner, it was returned to Vancouver resident Fatemeh Ghodsi. The iPhone was reportedly dropped during a boat ride in September, and contained photos of Ghodsi just before the drop.

"I was in a situation where I kind of lost balance and dropped it in the water," said Ghodsi. Staff members at the park told her 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.

On receiving a text from her old number, the iPhone's owner thought it was friends pranking her, but was later convinced to visit Chilliwack to retrieve her smartphone.

"I was in complete shock, initially to start with," she continued. "It was kind of like a zombie phone coming back to me, because I'd totally make peace with it being gone."

The water-resistance of iPhones has led to numerous other reports over the years, where iPhones are dropped into bodies of water then retrieved at a later time.

In February 2020, Disney officials returned an iPhone to its owner, after scuba divers picked it up from the Seven Seas Lagoon two months after being dropped. One year later in February 2021, a man jumped into Victoria Inner Harvour in British Columbia to retrieve his iPhone XS from the freezing water.