YouTuber Finds Fully Functioning iPhone Lost In River 15 Months Ago

A YouTuber found an iPhone lost in a river 15 months ago - and to his surprise, it still worked.

Better still, Michael Bennett, was able to reunite the phone with its owner, who had invaluable text messages from her late dad saved on the device.

Mr Bennett - whose YouTube channel 'Nuggetnoggin' has 741,000 subscribers - found the phone will diving in the Edisto River in South Carolina.

Down the years he has found all sorts of things while exploring under water, including shark teeth and golf balls, however, he was shocked when he found the device in the depths.

Speaking to WDAM 7, he said: "I came across something that looked kind of like a rope maybe attached to car keys, and when I pulled it up, I seen a phone inside of a waterproof case and I'm like, 'No way, this is unbelievable.'

"We charged the phone. When it turned on, it had a passcode, so you couldn't get inside."

Determined to track down the owner, Mr Bennett took out the SIM card and put it in another phone, and from there was able to figure out that the owner was Erica Bennett - weirdly enough.

ABC News 4

It turns out she lost it during a family trip (with her completely separate Bennett family) on 19 June 2018. She hadn't noticed she'd dropped it while gathering her belongings from their boat and her husband Jason subsequently searched in the river for it to no avail.

But while the loss of a phone is something most of us have had to deal with at some stage, the discovery was much more valuable for Ms Bennett, as the phone contained messages from her late father.

Ms Bennett said: "It was kind of emotional because the last thing I have from him is saying, 'Hey I'm playing phone tag with you, so I just figured I just text you, how are you feeling?' And I think he had called me after that. I'm pretty sure it was Father's Day."

So, two lessons to take away from this story. Firstly, it seems waterproof phone cases can actually work extremely effectively. And two, it turns out YouTubers can actually be quite nice and useful, not just annoying.

Topics: Awesome, US News, Technology, Weird, YouTube

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey