Owain Davies is a lucky man. Owain, who had lost his iPhone in August 2021 during a canoe trip on the River Wye in the county of Gloucestershire, has had his smartphone returned to him some ten months later – and it still works.
A man by the name of Miguel Pacheco found the phone while canoeing on the river with his family. Pacheco, from Drybrook, Gloucestershire, spotted "something blue floating in the water" and after returning home, he dried it out with an airline and compressor, before placing it in the airing cupboard overnight.
"In the morning when I put it on charge, I just couldn't believe it," he said. The screensaver showed a photo of a man and woman with the date 13 August, the day it had fallen into the water.
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Pacheco shared the photo on social media where it was eventually recognised by a friend of its original owner. Davies was blown away that Pacheco took such efforts to get it back to him, saying "my natural reaction would be to hand it in to the nearest pub. It wouldn't be to use my air compressor to dry it out and dismantle it."
"I know that if I lose my phone, I have a lot of pictures of my children, I would like it to come back to me," Mr. Pacheco told the BBC.
The iPhone has been water-resistant for years now but it is still a surprise that one has managed to survive for ten months at the bottom of a river.
