iPhone somehow survives at the bottom of an icy lake for several months

While ice fishing with a friend last year, Michael Guntrum accidentally dropped his iPhone into the hole he was fishing from. Because of the frigid weather—Guntrum said it was minus 25 degrees—retrieving it was out of the question.

Miraculously, his iPhone survived, found earlier this year after the lake was drained.

“We were sitting in our portable shanty, and I got a bite on my rod,” Guntrum explained to BuzzFeed News. “I laid the phone on my lap, and it slipped off. Instead of landing flat in the snow, it hit its edge and rolled in the hole.”

Guntrum said he caught the fish but “it wasn’t worth it.”

That happened in March 2015.

Later that year, the same lake Guntrum fished at was drained due to structural deficiencies. And about a month after that, Daniel Kalgren, a mechanical engineer, found the phone buried beneath about six inches of mud.

“I took the phone home, cleaned it, and put it in rice,” Kalgren said.

Photo: Daniel Kalgren

The phone that wouldn’t die

Somehow, the iPhone woke up from its cryogenic hibernation, giving Kalgren the opportunity to contact Guntrum about his lost phone.

The iPhone 4 was protected by an OtterBox case, which might explain how the device was able to survive.

If director Alejandro G. Iñárritu ever makes a sequel to The Revenant, Guntrum’s iPhone story might make for solid inspiration.