Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal | Hacker News Reader

Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

riedel.wtf

263 pointscrackercrews201 comments

I've gotta give them props for the persistence. I would have just given up and bought a new iPhone. It's impressive that the iPhone survived the whole ordeal, without even turning off. And the amount of stuff they found makes me wonder why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby.

> I would have just given up and bought a new iPhone

If people didn't already realize that most of people hanging around on HN have the top 10% of the world's wealth, this made things clearer than ever (the phone in question costs around 1000 EUR)

Makes all the conversations around finance here make so much more sense.

I suspect the vast majority of people on HN are in the top 1% globally. People don't realise how high incomes in the US are relative to the rest of the world.

> People don't realise how high incomes in the US are relative to the rest of the world.

Gross definitely, but net (after taxes, healthcare, housing and other fixed costs)... not so sure. High CoL - seriously even as someone who lives in Munich, US housing prices are utterly incomprehensible, just how the fuck do y'all even manage to survive?! -, high costs for transportation, the utter madness that is US healthcare, hundreds of dollars for cable TV, having to save for your pension or student loans.

I'd wager that even after accounting for taxes, most Europeans have more money in their pocket than Americans working in the same field.

(And obviously, all of us have it vastly better than 99% of people in Africa)

> Gross definitely, but net (after taxes, healthcare, housing and other fixed costs)... not so sure.

Actually, EU individual tax rates are on average similar to those of US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

And yes, we also pay for healthcare one way or another.

Tax rates might be similar but income is way higher. It is relatively common to earn 6 digits in tech in USA. In Western Europe, not so much. Besides cost of living, which might be higher in US, finding 1000 for a new iPhone is way easier there.

> I'd wager that even after accounting for taxes, most Europeans have more money in their pocket than Americans working in the same field.

Having worked in SF and Berlin... SF was definitely better paid overall and I made enough money to buy a nice apartment in Berlin, something which seems unachievable by working in Berlin all your life.

It's easy to live beneath your means on a SF salary and squirrel away tons of cash. Not so easy on normal US incomes.

Median disposable income (after healthcare, taxes, housing, etc.) in the US is the highest in the world aside from Norway I believe.

Curious, does the "after healthcare" allow for future, average healthcare claims?

I imagine it's easy to have high disposable income today, if not allowing for the cancer treatment you may pay for tomorrow.

As said, this is a question. I understand only some people in the USA have full health insurance.

Actually it looks like the calculation goes the opposite direction, basically disposable income is calculated by adding your income in dollars to other benefits you get (healthcare, food stamps, etc.), and subtracting taxes. So that is kind of accounted for, since in countries other than the US their healthcare benefits year-over-year will be added to their measured income.

For the average person though there isn't much risk of having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for cancer treatment. The vast majority of Americans have health insurance, and your costs are limited by the out of pocket maximum.

> your costs are limited by the out of pocket maximum.

“Limited”, ha, ha, ha, to $8k for an individual/$16k for a family. (Very generous of them to assume a family has two wage earners making equally as much.)

Better hope your cancer treatment doesn’t span two calendar years.

If I had a dollar for every American I've seen working at the same companies that was spending $800+ a month for healthcare insurance coverage for themselves, their spouse, their two kids... And then over the course of a year probably a few-thousand in "co-pays" for doctors visits and minor things where the insurance doesn't pay 100% of the doctor visits. And then they still would have a $8,000+ deductible for many categories of expensive medical costs per year, if they ever have to use it, before full coverage kicks in.

I am fortunate enough that my spouse has her own very good medical coverage and we do not have kids, so our monthly outlays are somewhat less.

If you consider that $800 to be equivalent to a tax, the person's take home net income was actually less than if they were an equivalent-of-a-W2 employee in Canada or another place with a social healthcare system.

The tax rate for $100,000USD/yr is roughly the same between California and British Columbia. But you only get healthcare in one of those.

Exactly, although healthcare and taxes aside, the market ratio of gross salary (as measured in USD) for a certain position relative to cost of real estate and cost of living is a lot higher in many places in California than in BC. The same job might pay the equivalent of $130k USD/year in a big city in CA but would be $105k CAD/year (equivalent to $87k USD/year) in Vancouver.

Not that housing costs in many big cities in CA aren't also ridiculous - but BC seems to be setting new records in unaffordability.

Jobs paying $100k in California generally come with health insurance though.

They do but what happens when life happens and you have to quit or you get divorced and you’re a stay at home parent. Lots of edge cases, although of course there are a lot more jobs paying >=$100,000USD in CA than BC or much of Canada.

This tax just comes with no guarantees - you're out of the job means all that you've spent is gone. In contrast a decent healthcare system will take care of you even when you're out of a job. A hospital in UK or Germany won't leave you on the street, even if they know you don't have insurance.

In Germany, it's even better: if you're out sick for longer than 6 weeks, health insurance takes over paying your wages, although at a reduced rate (~70% or such, got changed two years or so ago).

I keep trying to make this point to people when these topics come up, and it never quite seems to sink in. The whole "don't mess why my private insurance! We all love it!" sort of defense... Employer-provided insurance only benefits people who are in employment. Get fired? You're hosed. Need to move someplace and have to leave the employer? You're hosed. Get sick and can't work? Eventually, you'll be terminated from the employer and then... you're hosed.

I can’t speak for other fields but tech scene in Germany and EU is a joke and there is no way one’s compensation matches US. I had a job offer in Munich and considering how low the quality of housing is you end up still paying more than €1300 for a 1 bed flat. (This was my market search back in 2018)

What the fuck, were you searching at Marienplatz in the city center? I mean, I'm a born and raised Munich dude, 1300€ for a 1BR sounds like someone attempted to rip you off - or you were on the hunt for a fully furnished apartment which is ... a questionable decision in itself.

"Globally" does a lot of the work here, though. 1% of world's population is a mid-sized country's worth of people.

To be fair, HN is also confused why you wouldn't just eat cake.

I wouldn't expect many in the 90% to buy an expensive iPhone in the first place. It's a narrow range that would buy one but not a replacement.

Regardless, kudos to them for persevering. As another user said, many people would assume the device to be inoperable, even if findable, so not try.

There are a lot of people in the US who buy iPhones (or comparable Android equivalents) on 2-year payment plans with carrier lock-in. Many can afford an extra $40 per month, but don't have the savings to drop $1000 in one go.

> In 2018, the median earnings for full-time, year-round cashiers were $22,109, compared with $35,301 for retail salespersons and $42,421 for first-line supervisors of retail salespersons. > In contrast, the median earnings for all full-time, year-round workers was $48,565 in 2018.

I've spent ten years working retail here in California, and I'll offer my anecdata: a great number of even those cashiers own iPhones! Ten million people work retail in the US making no more than ~$40k, and that's a population that demonstrably owns iPhones but is hard-pressed to replace them on short notice.

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/profile-of-th...

Good numbers/experience. I've usually seen people in such situations buy refurb or a cheaper model for the rest of that period if their insurance policy doesn't give them a refurb. That's moving the goalposts a bit from buying another iPhone 12, admittedly.

That's less common in Europe (and Berlin specifically). I'm guessing even less so for something like the 12 Pro.

Yes that phone would cost me about 2 weeks pay. Sounds pathetic compared to some of the people around here but I actually have a very high quality of life in my opinion, just no iPhone 12. For 2 weeks pay I am going to make a solid effort for sure. On top of the cost, most people these days despite knowing the importance of regular backups, will not do so and most likely have some photos on the photos or information on the phone they can not lose so getting the phone back would be important in that aspect as well.

In Germany phone insurance is very common. You would just pay a deductible of 50-100 eur

Top 10%? More like top 1%.

The global 1% are people with about $900k in wealth.

Judging by the comments, or at least by those who comment (semi-)actively, a surprisingly sizeable fraction of HN actives do fit into that bucket.

And for a properly demoralising angle, that level of wealth is still a far cry from being fully financially independent.

> And for a properly demoralising angle, that level of wealth is still a far cry from being fully financially independent.

Really? I feel like if you had 900k in cash, and no debts, you could easily live freely. Maybe not the ultimate lifestyle, but pretty comfortably, even in the US. That's around 50k a year in investments. Even with a partner and maybe even a kid or two, you could get by and have the time to build up your own independent income sources, unless I'm wildly overestimated how much the average person wants to spend to live decently.

> feel like if you had 900k in cash, and no debts, you could easily live freely. Maybe not the ultimate lifestyle, but pretty comfortably, even in the US. That's around 50k a year in investments.

It's still cutting it very close. 900k in cash will go by faster than expected due to inflation. A single person in a rural or low COL area for under $2k/month between rent/food/utilities. This isn't really leaving much room for hobbies/enjoyment. I would say that's a bit above subsistence level. Rounding up, that might be $30k/year in basic living, which, in theory would last 30 years. Inflation's going to eat in to that - I can't say how much for sure, but I have a hard time seeing most people make $900k in cash last more than 10-15 years. There will be too many temptations to spend chunks, and there will be legitimate emergencies (thinking primarily of unexpected health stuff).

"50k year in investments" - that 900k would have to be invested moderately aggressively to ensure 50k/year coming off while maintaining most of the principal.

What may be more interesting is seeing what other people might view as "low bar" COL numbers. My mental model for much of the low COL areas of the US would be around $2k/month for a single person to live without being at 'rock bottom', basing mostly on what I see around me as lowish rent, food and utility numbers. I've no doubt some people stretch that number lower, and two people sharing a space would cut the number lower as well. I'd think 2 adults could get by on $3k at 'above subsistence levels' in many areas for a long time. Rounding up a tag, that might put you closer to $40k/year, but you'd still not make that $900k last a long time, between inflation and emergencies.

EDIT: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-much-money-you-need-t_b_9... - from a few years ago, there were a lot of numbers in the $40k-$60k range for various spots in the US.

Since my comment triggered a real discussion, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the subject. For what it's worth, my own views are probably on the fringe side.

To start with, when I say "financially fully independent", I'm not talking about a fixed amount. Instead I'm eyeing a figure that allows you to live comfortably (but not lavishly) with a family, in the place of your choosing, and not have to ever touch the principal. Even in the face of a devastating decade-long recession.

Let's work backwards from that. In case of a massive global downturn, looking down the barrel of a universal lost decade, it is still possible to invest your money so that you can get a reliable 1.8% above inflation from dividends alone. That's pre-tax. Assume capital gains are taxed at 35%, and we're talking about ~1.2% annual real return on investment.

If you expect your family's annual, comfortable living expenses (with assorted housing maintenance costs factored in) to be about 110k net, then you'll need 110/0.012 = 9.16M to invest. Let's round that up to 9.2M.

In case you want to retire to a relatively lavish lifestyle, so you can get a large estate and enough liquid cash to pay for helping staff even under the most drastic but still realistic scenarios, we're talking about post-tax net income of >200k a year, and a principal of at least 17M.

Feel free to plug your own numbers in.

And as a comparison point, if you take the term 'millionaire' from when it became popular and try to adjust for inflation you get a threshold of around 30M. Which seems about right for "permanent lavish lifestyle, times two".

Oh true, I forgot to account inflation, and also healthcare. While I don't think you could retire at 30 with it, 900k would give you a comfy runway to build your own income sources (like an online business or something), while living freely for many years. I guess that's what I meant by financial freedom, not necessarily not having any other income forever. And building online income streams isn't for everyone of course, but it's probably a desire of many here.

On the other hand, 900k will let you comfortably retire and live like a king if you move to a lower cost of living country.

> will let you comfortably retire and live like a king if you move to a lower cost of living country.

agreed, except... you can basically never come back.

> I guess that's what I meant by financial freedom, not necessarily not having any other income forever

Yeah, the phrase can mean different things to different people.

It's definitely a 'comfy runway' for a lot of folks in a lot of places, even if it's not a "never have to work again" number.

If you're interested, you can look into "Financial Independence / Retire Early" discussion forums and read about people's plans for retiring and living off their investments. Most that I've seen that retire in USA are aiming for much more than $1m and still live rather frugally, though it depends on their plan, how much longer they plan on living, if they are planning on giving anything away as inheritance, and where they plan on living.

By income, I see numbers varying from 100k-250k/year, which I think a decent chunk of HN would fall under.

If you are making €200,000 per year, your time is worth around €100 per hour.

Thus if this is going to take more than 10 hours, it is not worth your time.

This doesn't make sense. You don't work 24h a day. I highly doubt they went a day without pay to get the phone back. Even then it would still be more than a full day's worth of pay at €200,000 per year.

It makes sense on average, assuming 1) that the activity is at least as unpleasant as going to work, and 2) that you negotiated your job hours to your satisfaction.

If I spend enough days on annoying wastes of time, I don't want to lose all my free time, so I'm going to need to reduce how many days I go to work. And since that means doing less work, I can only push that so far before I have to start taking those days unpaid.

("It's more important to get the money than to have those days off" would mean I should have just negotiated more pay and less vacation from the start, so that's incompatible with the premise.)

Maybe I could have taken this one day in stride and ignored it. But maybe I was already on the edge of needing a break, and this pushes me to take a multi-week sabbatical. On average, in a situation like this, 1 day wasted on annoying tasks gets traded for about 1 day of labor.

And this idea doesn't require you to be able to control your hours as much as you want, just a few percent is enough to make the logic work.

This is, of course, only true if you can bill someone for those ten hours.

And even if you could, you should be billing them at a substantially higher rate than your normal salary already consuming your full-time bandwidth. These extra hours are precious and increasingly scarce bandwidth for self, and fast overlap into exceedingly inconvenient territory.

That might make some sense if you get paid by the hour and can get overtime. But if you are salaried that is crazy talk.

Is going to the toilet worth your time? Or would you pay someone to do it for you?

Going to the toilet is inefficient, that's why I only eat precisely the calories and nutritional content that my body needs without anything left over to produce waste

Unfortunately that’s not how the body works. Waste isn’t produced because of excess intake. That’s what causes far buildup. Anything you eat and drink will create waste.

"Going to the toilet is inefficient"

By what meassure? To me it is by definition part of every living metabolism.

Oh god yes. Imagine being able to go to a concert and instead of having to go to the port-a-potty you could just deduct a couple dollars from your bank account. That sounds amazing.

Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary.

"Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary"

And then there is the hazzle of breathing. And walking. And moving around!

Oh boy, if only someone could do living for me.

You've got some weird comparisons here. Aside from not seeming relevant, of the three two are ones we definitely pay other people to do sometimes (ever got on a bus?). The last, breathing - you mean I could pay someone to breathe instead of me doing it? And go diving with no tank? Sounds incredible.

The main point is, that when you view everything monetary, you might miss out a bit of life in general.

The guys in the article had fun, doing what they did.

The goal of the monetary view is still to increase your enjoyment. If you have fun doing something, it won't tell you to stop. It only steps in to say "If this is an unfun obligation, maybe you should treat it like a job."

You're not going to miss out on much of life that way.

Yes, and the guys in the article had fun, recovered their expensive phone - and got some fame - I originally replied to the comment who stated the whole thing would be nothing for him, simply because of the amount of time invested vs. his hourly wage. That sounds like a more money centered philosophy to me, but each to his own.

That's very flawed and naive method for measuring value of one's time.

Why? I’m not saying you’re wrong per se but you offer a stern dismissal without any reason nor alternative.

For what it’s worth, I think the GP makes a pretty common opinion. For example people on lower incomes will do more household jobs themselves because it saves them money, whereas people on higher incomes will pay people to do things because it saves them time. The opinion might be dressed up differently when I state that but it’s still the simple act of a person putting a value on their free time. It’s why we have house cleaners, windows cleaners, gardeners, car washers, and so on and so forth. The only different is people don’t usually casually post precise numeric values against their time. But it’s still a sentiment shared by many.

Putting a valuation on one’s time is not unreasonable but assuming every hour of your life is worth the same as the equivalent hourly rate of your salaried job kind of is? Or at least it’s overly simplistic. Not every hour of your life is fungible like that.

It is overly simplistic. But equally if you’re paid less then a car wash you’d probably want to wash the car yourself.

There is going to be a line drawn somewhere that equates to “yes this is worthwhile expense” and “no, I’m better off doing that myself”. While I acknowledge that line is going to be variable depending on how much one likes or loaves a particular activity, equating the cost of outsourcing to your own rate of pay isn’t an unreasonable approximation for where that line should reside.

Why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby.

Magnet fishing is a thing. There are web sites for it. Amazon sells kits with very strong magnets and ropes.

It's pretty big on YouTube. There's also a fair amount of underwater metal detecting and phone recovery/lost stuff discovery. It's oddly entertaining! Unfortunately a complete waste of time, too. Haha.

Maybe is the combination of rust iron, salmonella, chilling cold water and skin cuts.

Aren't such big magnets an hazard for anything digital near them? Everything has a computer inside now, starting by cars.

"Maybe is the combination of rust iron, salmonella, chilling cold water and skin cuts."

Add old explosives with rusty triggers to the list.

Large permanent magnets are a fairly minor hazard to most electronics.

A phone or iPad will take 3T and work ok afterwards. I’ve seen engineers photograph the cold head on an MR scanner and the phone has held up just fine.

Sometimes they turn off for a bit and need a little rest.

Unless they are taking the photo from near or in the bore, the camera isn't seeing anything like 3T (or, for that matter 1T).

Most such photos are taken from outside the 5G line which is a very different kettle of fish.

You are right that lots of electronics will be safe in the sense that it will not function in the field but be ok afterwards outside the room - so long as you don't move it around too fast.

On the other hand, most consumer electronics would likely fly out of your hand and smash into the bore well before you get anywhere close to the peak strength.

The camera is taken right up to the bore. You’re right, it wouldn’t be 3T, but it’s getting close and it’s way inside the 5g line.

The iPhones I have seen go in have not had a lot of pull and can be held, even close to the bore (less than 1m).

The service instructions require photographs of various component - I watched a cold head get photographed recently.

I’ve also seen an engineer take a laptop pretty close. It turned off but didn’t suffer any lasting ill effects as far as we could tell.

All this fits in the category of ‘don’t do this’, but with care it is done by the engineering staff.

Ah, service tech makes sense. Most others aren't going see anything interesting in the photo that close.

Laptop is pretty crazy, what where they (not) thinking? I guess was imagining "normal" camera not phone, but you are right that modern attempts to make phones light have removed most of the magnetic material.

It doesn't take much to make it a problem (e.g. steel screws). Typical rooms are going to over 20g acceleration on ferromagnetic components in the highest gradient regions.

Absolutely. The engineer with the laptop had a brain fade - his area was usually CT.

As magnets have got better control over their fringe fields, the issue has got worse. The field goes from nothing to 3T in a very short distance, so 10+ T/m rate of change is not uncommon.

Not everybody has access to Computer Tomography machines but lets examine a more common situation. Moving our magnet to the fishing area.

Lets imagine that we put, not a magnetic string, a standard size neodymium magnet for fishing in the front seat of our car... or we move it in the car trunk (but forgot that our car has the battery located inside the trunk (as several BMW or VOLVO models do, for example).

What could happen?

There are basically two purely EM mechanisms at work for large static fields. First, if the field is big enough, it will saturate components that rely on EM effect to work - these will stop functioning until they are removed from the field. Permanent damage possible if other components behave badly in this situation.

The other thing is if you move in the field you will induce currents on anything like a conductive loop in your device. Damage potential is really dependent on the strength, speed of motion, and how sensitive your device is.

Of course, if you have magnetic materials, mechanical damage is also possible.

I suspect those fishing magnets fall off fast enough you'd have to get it lined up just right to a control board to see any effect, if then.

> Sometimes they turn off for a bit and need a little rest.

Could it be because of a helium leak?

https://hackaday.com/2018/10/31/helium-can-stop-your-iphone-...

I think the real reason it’s not a bigger hobby is that what you get 99% of the time is just junk.

When I did riversurfung in European rivers and canals we always had a cleanup day at the begin of the season, and we pulled out a lot of gear. Bicycles, chairs, various stuff, but never a laptop, watch or phone.

We jumped into it and dived. Magnets are only for tiny things. Only the big things block the way and are dangerous.

https://www.reddit.com/r/magnetfishing/

Indeed it is [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing

> …makes me wonder why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often.

You may be interested in “Below the Surface”, an exhibition of objects found in Amsterdam canals that have been dated from 2005 (phones, coins) back to -119000 (sea shells).

https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten

I found a load of clay pipe stems on the bank of the Thames. My father found a 16th century corkscrew there too.

It makes a very distant past feel much closer.

The past is all around us ... or below us.

> why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often.

There are TikTok accounts devoted to this (where else?) - it seems surprisingly common to find safes.

... or they plant them :)

Nah, stolen safes end up in canals very often, guns and knives too. They are easy places to dispose of small heavy items and they usually stay hidden for a long time.

It's very dangerous especially in France due to old ordinance. Google magnet fishing

"Ordinance" is legislation. "Ordnance" is the explosive stuff. Old ordinance can also be troublesome, but is rarely deadly.

And just to confuse things a little more we have in the UK:

https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

Which is not a survey of explosive devices.

But it is (or was, originally, when it was named) a survey for directing military ordnance.

Directing military ordnance in the 1700s.

Huh, and I've been pronouncing that ordinance. I guess those two words are pretty similar.

I'm not GP but as a non-native speaker, thanks for the tip! I never realized :)

I'm a native english speaker, and I also never realized those were two different words.

The classic usage for Brits is the 'ordnance survey' (maps) which originate in the need for accurate maps when calculating angles for artillery!

Also, while I'm a native speaker who does know this one I think it's obscure enough that most don't. In fact I suspect it's obscure enough that the mis-spelling will replace it eventually anyway.

Incidentally the products of magnet fishing often turn up on Reddit's /r/whatisthisthing sub. You also see quite a few munitions. Often enough, in fact, that they have a munitions bot that warns people to contact the authorities (and not, e.g., twist the end to see if it comes off...)

Also, at least in American English, “ordinance” is not a mass noun. An ordinance is a piece of legislation. So I would say “an old ordinance can also be troublesome…”

Ahh, a fellow soul feeling the burden of knowing the difference between mass and count nouns.

At least in jurisdictions that have abolished capital punishment.

Same in Germany. I never considered magnet fishing growing up there and now I remember why: it was super common for WW2 explosives to be found that didn't explode on impact but had corroded over time.

If you got an email in your inbox that said to click a link to find out what personal item of yours somebody had found with a magnet, would that be considered magnet phishing?

Only if you provide proof by a magnet link. Magnet magnet fishing phishing.

My 12 year old niece fished a handgun out of a canal couple months back, that is pretty uncommon heren in the Netherlands

It's also pretty uncommon in the U.S, largely due to there not being a lot of canals relative to land area.

> It's impressive that the iPhone survived the whole ordeal

My SE just survived a trip through the washing machine. It got very mildly scuffed by buttons and zippers, but you couldn't tell it spent 30-40 minutes sloshing around in dirty water.

It's become quite popular in the UK. People frequently pull out guns or munitions like grenades and cause streets to be closed by the police. I'm not sure if they ever pull anything useful.

Magnet fishing in Germany is of questionable legality. In any case you have to dispose of everything you pull out, leaving it or throwing it back in is definitely illegal.

Interesting. On the one hand the bikes and miscellaneous scrap people leave on the sides in the UK is an eyesore, but on the other hand it was already there, it was just hidden. Is scrap metal harmless at the bottom of a canal or river? Are they not doing a public service by exposing it and allowing more easy disposal by local authorities?

> the iPhone survived

They had a lot better chance of success since it was fresh water, vs if it had fallen in the ocean...

I'm not sure I would call the water from the video "fresh"...

but certainly less conductive in terms of total dissolved salts than the ocean. I meant "fresh" water in the sense of, not ocean water, not something you'd want to drink :)

https://www.lenntech.com/applications/ultrapure/conductivity...

The phone is IP68, so I would think the conductivity of the water is not a major concern unless there is some mechanical damage that impacts the waterproofing

The lightning or USB-c connector on a phone has voltage present, and exposed copper like that plus salt water surely isn't a good combination. Without making an ip68 rated twist lock huge charger connector I don't see how the port itself can be waterproofed.

The IP68 rating applies to the entire device, it doesn't exclude the charging port.

These connectors are well-protected against complete shorts (e.g. people sticking a piece of metal into the port). Both Lightning and USB-C have protocol negotiation at low-voltage/low-current before any meaningful current will be delivered by either side.

They do quite often the find dumped guns etc search for magnet fishing videos on YouTube

They do. Cambridge, UK, has regular magnet fishers.

My GF dropped one of her airpod pro’s in a storm drain. I taped some rare earth magnets (extracted from some old e-junk) onto a foldable ruler. The airpods end snapped onto the magnets and I fished it up!

You can also buy earth magnets at local woodworking stores. They're super fun!

I just find the German text message entertaining. The words and syntax are great.

"Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst"

Geplumpst! Sounds exactly the right word for what just happened.

"Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen"

Couldn't we all.

Google translating here - is it because plumpst means "fallen" and also sounds like the sound a phone might make when falling into a canal?

Exactly

Could someone translate?

> Geplumpst

Basically means something fell or as Google Translate says "flopped" -- however, GP seems to be excited over the apparent onomatopoeia in the word because it evokes the sound of something falling in water.

> "Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst"

This essentially says "My cellphone fell in the canal!" but with the delicious "geplumpst" word sound.

> "Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen"

This exclaims "I could use a beer now".

"geplumst" is the funny part here, it's very colloquial, kinda silly-sounding, playful – similar to "plumped". Just makes the whole sentence more delightful.

it also rhymes with "gebumst" which means "banged" or "fucked"...

"My phone just plopped into the Landwehr Canal."

"Hahaha and now what"

"Great question"

"Now I could use a beer."

I would say the best translation to English is 'plopped' - it's a sort of whimsical or even comical way of saying it fell in.

From the context and the word "Bier", "I'd like to grab a beer" perhaps

> Mir ist grad mein handy in den Landwahrkanal geplumpst

My cell phone just fell into the Landwehr Canal

> Jetzt könnte ich ein Bier gebrauchen

I could use a beer now

(Google's translations, not mine)

I’m surprised to hear that bluetooth, GPS, and cellular don’t work in water. I wonder what’s the science behind this.

Radio is part of the EM spectrum. EM waves (including light) decay under water at an exponential rate due to absorption by the medium. So data transmission underwater must rely instead on mechanical waves (sound).

This is why underwater robots mostly use tethers, otherwise you couldn't control them very well (RC control would stop working at a very shallow depth).

Note: why are folks downvoting an honest question?

> (including light)

I remember being told in some physics class that visible light is actually the radiation which penetrates the most, and that indeed this may be the very reason why it's visible: eyes were developed when life was still aquatic, therefore they evolved to be sensitive to the range of frequencies that could reach them.

Yeah it does penetrate the most, so you do see some communications utilizing visible light comms. But the bitrate is bad and gets worse very quickly as you go deeper. Like, sunlight will penetrate the water a lot especially since there's so much of it coming down broad spectrum, but shoot a laser into seawater and you'll find the beam dissipates rather quickly.

It's mostly water-to-surface comms that can tolerate being in the very top of the water column that utilize this tech. Unfortunately aligning the transmitter/receivers is a bit tricky -- a lot of research has gone into better ways to send and receive information from air into water.

I guess it makes sense if eyes developed aquatically first, but it doesn't seem that interesting in the sense that most things developed aquatically first. Like even if it didn't develop aquatically, seems like evolution would have found its way on land, where sight is more useful, especially since you can't use things like lateral lines to detect pressure fluctuations (I mean there's terrestrial hearing, but seems like being immersed in a dense medium makes pressure sensing that much more important).

Don't EM waves decay at an exponential rate in all mediums?

No, usually it’s polynomial. Radius squared, that is.

Sure but what's the exponent?

"Note: why are folks downvoting an honest question?"

I suppose because of Friday.

Most water you’d drop a phone into has enough traces of salt to make it conductive. Therefore, the water acts like a faraday cage.

Theres a calculation you can do to calculate this, its pretty standard E&M stuff. Basically you calculate the skin depth of the material and thats as far as the signal can penetrate. The derivation highlights some cool things:

1. Its frequency dependent. This is why military submarines communicate at around 30 Hz.

2. Your audio cable (and all high frequency power cables) are stranded

3. Your microwave is effectively shielded with a thin layer of metal

4. An induction stove wont work with Al pans, but will quickly melt Al foil

Wow, that's fascinating. I've never heard of this—I assumed it was only because the water is dense enough that it absorbs the radio signals.

Lots of answers already, but let me contribute this little heuristic:

Radio waves, being EM radiation, are just light - like "visible light", except our eyes can't see it. There are some peculiarities related to wavelengths (particularly when they get very large, or close to the size of a regular surface pattern of an illuminated object), but to a good approximation, you can mentally replace "radio antenna" with "a lightbulb", and make correct determinations about how radio behaves.

In this case: much like you can't see much in water, compared to air, and a submerged flashlight also doesn't shine very far, a submerged phone has a hard time seeing signals, and its emissions don't travel far either.

That's a good question, submarines use very low frequencies for communication, so I assume bluetooth/GSM might be pretty attenuated by the water? But also it might have turned off due to the water shorting something?

Signal attenuation is correct.

Are different frequencies attenuated differently then out of interest in water?

Different frequencies are attenuated differently, yes. So like, green laser vs red laser will have different max distances under water.

Fun fact, salinity of water also affects transmission. So rate of transmission in a lake vs ocean is also going to be different.

Yes, generally the smaller the wavelength, the worse the attenuation. Quick googling: 4g is 600Mhz to 2.5Ghz or 0.5m to 12.5cm wavelength. For comparison, the US Navy uses 80Hz or 3750km wavelength to talk to submerged submarines.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_dipole

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_dipole :

> After initially considering several larger systems (Project Sanguine), the U.S. Navy constructed two ELF transmitter facilities...

> Both transmitters were shut down in 2004. The official Navy explanation was that advances in VLF communication systems had made them unnecessary.

I then started reading about VLF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_frequency and on that page I see this sentence:

> VLF waves used to communicate with submarines have created an artificial bubble around the Earth that can protect it from solar flares and coronal mass ejections; this occurred through interaction with high-energy radiation particles.

That sounds absolutely weird - how should that "...that can protect it from solar flares..." be interpreted?

EDIT: didn't notice Wikipedia's linked article - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/wow-guys...

water absorbs 2.4GHz readily. this is why microwaves use that frequency to heat your food. microwaves are why that frequency band is unlicensed, too.

so that's Bluetooth and wi-fi ruled out.

GPS is a lower frequency, ~1.5GHz I think, and GPS is already an extremely low power signal.

I don't know about 4g or 5g though.

4G and 5G are going to depend on the mobile carrier. In the US, at least, that's usually going to be somewhere between 850MHz and 2100MHz. I recall reading something more recent about 700MHz being opened up in some areas.

Looks like Germany is 700-2600MHz for 4G, with 5G up at 3500MHz[0].

For underwater stuff it looks like you need something much lower in the kHz range[1], at least for distances of up to a couple hundred feet. Obviously this particular situation involves a much shorter distance. The page on MF radio[2] does mention water, and talks about frequencies up to 3MHz, but that's still way lower than any LTE bands used.

[0] https://www.gsmarena.com/network-bands.php3?sCountry=GERMANY

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_frequency

Verizon has used 700MHz for a long time, its their primary band. T-mobile uses 700MHz and 600MHz in many areas (generally as range extension, not a primary band).

Signal also drops out pretty fast - once you go past a few cm (lets say 3-5cm, about 2") signal is out...

I once tested that with a waterproof phone in clear water, can't recall which phone it was tho...

Don't feel brave enough to try it with my iPhone 8, even tho it supposedly is waterproof as well - my SO once tested it with a spilled drink...

> I wonder what’s the science behind this.

the same general reason why microwave band radio sees signal fade when there's rain on a point-to-point link through the air, but magnified greatly since the radio is now inside a solid mass of water. One of the problems faced by modern submarines for data communications, they use either ELF/VLF trailing antennas that are spooled out, while running 'kind of' shallow, or buoys, or antennas on periscope masts.

It’s why we use sonar rather than radar to see underwater… Indeed also the reason we can use radar to detect rainclouds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines

Not much different than why they don't work through the ground - it's mass that absorbs a wide range of frequencies.

water absorbs electromagnetic waves, especially high frequency ones. That's why your microwave heats things :D

Fairly big topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_heating

Off Topic but I learnt something new today from this article. Instead of just tapping the "Find my Phone" icon on Apple Watch, if you keep it pressed, it also flashes the LED light along with the sound on your iPhone.

> At this point, we really have to give props to the iPhone Hardware Engineering team: We were able to recover the device in perfect mint condition and without water damage. The new Ceramic Shield Glass really held up to the strong forces of the magnet and junk in the canal, and the IP68 water resistance is mind-blowing. And last but not least: MagSafe seems to be a perfect tool to recover lost iPhones from the water.

He was lucky. A family member spilled water over her beloved 6 months old iPhone 12, it leaked in and caused stains on the display.

That seems like pretty bad luck! In the early months of the pandemic I washed my iPhone 11 daily with no ill effects.

It was likely damaged. A fall, for instance, can damage a smartphone enough to break its seal while being almost imperceptible to humans. Making electronics water resistant is always a very tricky endeavor.

Oh probably. But a lot of people drop their phone once in a while. I just read about a guy dropping it into a Berlin canal! The thing is that if it dropped once you can’t rely on your phone being waterproof anymore.

Maybe this is a naive question: but I remember growing up there was a hard and fast rule that you could not have magnets anywhere near your technology, is this not the case anymore?

Was it only floppy-disks and disk based tech which had issues?

Yeah, there are not many moving parts now. It messed with read heads in HDDs as well as CRT monitors.

I still get nervous if there are magnets around cause I don't know how they work.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miracles-fucking-magnets-how-...

How much volume of air must be inside a standard phone these days to make it buoyant?

An iPhone 12 weighs 164g [1], so, through the magic of the metric system, it needs to displace a minimum of 164ml of water to float.

The iPhone has an external volume of 14.67cm * 7.15cm * 0.74cm = 77.62cm^3 = 77.62ml. So it would need to be about 2x the volume to float.

[1] https://www.apple.com/iphone-12/specs/

Yeah thanks, I looked it up and got those numbers from calculations but wasn't sure if that was the right way to just calculate that because I am not familiar with it.

Time to roll back this innovation and release the new iphone with 2x volume so that it'd float.

Meet the new iPhone Air...

Lifeproof used to make an add-on life jacket that fit around their cases.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=lifeproof+case+life+jacket&...

But then it would be heavier, and need to be even bigger than 2x.

Might be an idea for a magsafe attachment: a floater :)

There’s this anecdote of Steve Jobs saw a prototype for an iPod and dropped it in a water tank in order to proof his engineers that they could make it smaller, because it had bubbles of air coming out.

https://tekdeeps.com/steve-jobs-threw-an-ipod-into-a-fish-ta...

That’s an old urban legend which has been told about many people and companies.

The calculation pretty much boils down to changing the phone's weight in kg to a volume in l.

Cigarette in mouth on the uptake adds to the absurd coolness of the ordeal.

Can't fall to mention that a fishing net rod, even one hand made with cheap materials, would had been a great helper in this case.

Interestingly enough, when I lived in Brussels people used magnets to fish stuff out of the canals on a regular basis :-) lots of "interesting" things are attracted to magnets.

That they could snag an iPhone was pretty amazing. I would be inclined to fish for other phones, perhaps the folks who live on canal boats could 'trawl' a magnet line :-) (It's Friday, okay?)

That makes one think whether there is a market of a magsafe attachment which can be used as a "hook" to grab phones in situations like this. A proper attachment (with some anti-skid surface) could grab the phone much stronger than a plain magnet.

In any case, they could have used a magsafe charger as the hook, that should also work well.

“ The best thing is, the screen turned on immediately, delivering missed Tinder notifications, without any damage.” I hope the guy finally gets some action - I mean he’s got iPhone 12 Pro with a magnet. Must work on the chickas too, right? ;)

I'm happy for them. An FPV drone of mine bounced into a canal recently and the motors get attached to magnets relatively easily, but I couldn't ever find it again even while fishing for hours with a large magnet fishing magnet.

>without water damage

IME you have to wait a few weeks to decide that one unfortunately. (on the other hand, if my iphone still worked I probably wouldn't have been motivated to get things like power management working on my pinephone.)

LR BLE (900 MHz) is interesting and the band I worked with more-so than 2.4 GHz because its range was far superior.

What we need is Tile Ultra or AirTag+: Underwater edition using 1.85 or 3.75 MHz. Or sonic pinging. :)

What a great excuse to give to those ignored Tinder matches.

Or a great conversation starter!

I hope the guy's immunizations are up to date, given that he initially jumped into the canal and tried diving down for his phone.

> something happened that nobody of us would have imagined... this was the missing iPhone

What a strange phrase, considering that was the goal.

Yeah, but I think most people would think there would be a very very low chance of succeeding in this crazy endeavour.

New product idea: iPhone magsafe fishing rod

preorder now your fishphone

Someone should market a selfie-stick that includes a small aquarium net attachment ===~~~~~{}

I'm confused. I thougt iphone where made of aluminium, that is not attracted by a magnet ...

Newer iPhone models have magnets in them to attach to various chargers and accessories.

It's also not uncommon to stick a metal disc on the back of the phone for magnetic vehicle dashboard mounts.

> Bluetooth, GPS, and Cellular Connections don‘t work in water unfortunately.

Does any radio work in water?

50% chance that this story was staged...

... there is a pretty "hip" German pop song, that makes fun about dropping an iPhone into the Landwehrkanal...

https://www.lyrics.com/track/33176002/Von+Wegen+Lisbeth/Ch%C...

That song is 4 years old, it's not exactly hip and happening

iPhones 7 through 11 felt increasingly easy to destroy with the slightest touch - not so the iPhone 12.

Interesting. I skipped from an iPhone 6 to an 11 Pro, and when I pick up my old 6 now it is both so thin and light as to feel very fragile, whereas the 11 Pro has a dense, hefty, solid feel in comparison. I have briefly used someone else's iPhone 12 and it didn't feel any different from my 11 Pro, to me. YMMV and all that.

They're easier to drop, but I haven't found mine to be excessively fragile. My iPhone 8 Plus is four-years old and has been dropped many times. It has few chips off the corners but is otherwise going strong.

Just because of the rounded edges that made it slippery?

Ohne Fischköcher sehr schwer

#magnetfishing for more of it

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