Man Claims His iPhone 7 Plus Spent 13 Hours at the Bottom of an Icy River, Was Retrieved Unharmed

Last September, Apple made headlines all around the globe when it unveiled the first iPhone featuring water-resistance certification from the International Electrochemical Commission. And while the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus boast only an IP67 waterproof rating — meaning they can withstand up to 30 minutes of water submersion at a depth of up to 42 inches — there may be reason to believe that Apple was a bit more conservative in its estimates of what the device could truly withstand while underwater.

This tale comes to us courtesy of several media outlets, including PetaPixel, who alleges that, during a recent, nighttime ice fishing trip in the town of Yakutsk, Russia, a man supposedly dropped his iPhone 7 Plus into a bone-chilling, 39-degree river. His friends accompanied him at the time; however, given the darkness of night, there was no viable way to see exactly where, or how far, the iPhone had fallen down into the depths of the water.

And so the story goes, they just decided to leave the device to marinate in that fateful, 39-degree ice bath overnight. Yet, sure enough, when they came back to retrieve it the following day, despite the odds so obviously stacked against them, something truly amazing happened.

As you can see in the following video, which was uploaded to Instagram, the man and his pals attempted to retrieve the device of their own volition, some “13 hours” after it had fallen in the water, only for the wet-suited gentleman to emerge less then a minute later with the fully functional iPhone 7 Plus in hand. According to the device’s owner, when it had fallen in the water, the device had 32% battery life remaining; and when it was retrieved “13 hours later,” it still had 19% left.

See the video below.