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actually not true, modern phones use SSD, and don't really get affected by magnets in the way you might expect.

True, they would only get fried if they used electronic components.

If the elevator carries the magnets, the magnetic field relative to the phone is constant, thus no induced current and no fried components.

Even hard disks are not affected by external magnetic field in the way most people expect. Strong magnetic fields interfere with the operation of drive (seeking voice coil) but accidental erasure of data on platters by external magnetic field is relatively improbable.

Generally most of the damage caused by strong external magnetic fields to any electronics are caused by second order effects, i.e. something gets confused and causes data-destroying failure.

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