A skydiving enthusiast from Devon, UK, experienced an unexpected testament to the durability of Apple's iPhone when he accidentally dropped his iPhone 13 Pro Max from a height of 14,000 feet.
Casey Flay, an engineer and seasoned skydiver, was making a jump last month when a simple oversight led to his phone falling out of his wingsuit pocket just after leaving the airplane.
The device plummeted from a height of over 4,200 meters, but to Flay's astonishment, it remained completely intact, continuing to function as if nothing had happened.
Flay, who had been using a GoPro camera mounted on his helmet, initially believed he had left his phone behind on the plane.
However, after checking the footage and realizing the phone had indeed fallen, he used the "Find My iPhone" app to track its location. The device was located approximately 4 miles away from his landing site, deep in a forested area.
"I didn’t even know it was gone at first. I thought I left it on the plane, but after checking the app, I saw it was in the woods," Flay said.
The 37-year-old engineer walked for about 30 minutes to retrieve his phone, expecting to find it shattered or severely damaged. However, to his surprise, the phone was in near-perfect condition, with no visible marks or scratches. Not only was it fully operational, but it also seemed to work even better than before the incident.
"I had spilled a drink on it a couple of years ago, and the side button had been stuck ever since. But now, after falling from 14,000 feet, it works perfectly. There wasn't a scratch on it, and it felt like it had just come out of the box. It's unbelievable," he added.
This extraordinary story has since gone viral, adding to Apple's growing reputation for producing remarkably durable devices. Flay's experience is far from unique; similar stories of iPhones surviving extreme conditions have surfaced in the past, further cementing the brand's reputation for resilience. In 2022, an iPhone 14 was retrieved from the ocean 33 days after being dropped, still fully functional. A year earlier, a man found his iPhone 10 working after being submerged at the bottom of a river for 10 months.
