Apple unable to power on iPhone of teen lost at sea
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Posted on 05/12/2016 3:35:23 PM PDT by Swordmaker
In a conference call on Tuesday night, an Apple team leader informed attorneys for the families of Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen that they were unable to restore Stephanos’ badly-corroded iPhone 6 to working order.
Austin and his friend Perry Cohen, both 14, went missing in July 2015 during a fishing trip off the coast of Jupiter, Florida. The U.S. Coast Guard found their boat during a search and rescue operation last year, but the boat was set adrift before it could be towed ashore by salvage teams. A Norwegian supply ship in March 2015 happened upon the 19-foot vessel about 100 miles off the coast of Bermuda. Stephanos’ iPhone 6 was found in a storage compartment in which it had sat in salt water for eight months.
The iPhone was meticulously disassembled by an Apple forensics team, which cleaned its components and performed a chemical report as part of a thorough diagnostics process. The iPhone was sent to Apple having suffered a significant amount of salt corrosion. Despite their best efforts, the Apple team were unable to get the iPhone to power on. Apple has informed the families of the result and the families may decide to pursue other options to retrieve data from the device.
Pam Cohen, Perry’s mother, said in a statement: “We learned yesterday that Apple went as far as they could to try to get Austin’s iPhone working, which, as Apple advised, was the first step in the process of retrieving information that might help us understand what happened to the boys. Apple also made it clear that getting the iPhone to power up was its only commitment to Blu Stephanos, which differs from what we heard from his attorney in court. For the generous efforts by Apple’s engineers, who we understand worked tirelessly to try to help us, we are so very grateful. According to Apple, there are other experts in the field who may be able to pick up where Apple left off, to continue the work. Apple has offered to securely hand the iPhone off to an expert in this technology if the families can agree on such an expert. We look forward to working cooperatively with Austin’s family toward this transition. We are not giving up on the iPhone’s potential for evidence until all viable efforts have been exhausted.”
MacDailyNews Take: Kudos to Apple for trying to get Austin’s iPhone to power back up. Hopefully, even without being able to power up the device, the data inside can still be extracted by different means by other experts.
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I knew the stepfather of one of the boy’s years ago. The boys were being raised to be fine young men.Unfortunately,they got ahead of themselves.
I admit, boiling nitric acid under high pressure is worse. But not much.
Salt water is not a chips pal
14 is too young to be navigating open ocean. Does anyone know if there are killer whales in that area?
You ain’t seen corrosion unless you’ve worked in a Kraft paper mill black liquor recovery boiler. I don’t know how the control electronics can survive.
And in a 19ft ‘vessel’, that’s ill-suited for open ocean.
No, no killer whales. Plenty of sharks, though.
You sent me to Wikipedia to learn about "black liquor" and the kraft process. Good Lord!
Yes, I can imagine that stuff holds records for corrosion.
I have raced sailboats, and have been a Mariner for over 35 years, and I can’t imagine why a caring parent would let their 14 year-old boy go out to sea for any reason. When did the kid start boating, at 10 years of age? It doesn’t make much sense, to me.
They were told to remain in the inlet.
Kids that grow up on the water and have some boating experience would not be in much danger if they stay in protected waters, know how to read the weather and have a FM radio for emergencies.
I have been in the waters off of Palm beach, Fl., and they are not what I would call “Protected”. The waves were about 4-6 feet, and not what I would call safe for a 19 foot Center-Console boat piloted by a 14 year-old.
Further, once you get out several miles, you have to deal with the Gulf Stream. That’s probably what happened to those kids.
Apparently, they have video of them leaving Jupiter Inlet.
How very sad for the parents to see the image of them leaving their lives.
They were obviously seeing calm waters inside but it could have been completely opposite outside.
Plus you have the BIG notch for the motor notch will let the boat get swamped in a NYC second with a following wave.
That boat should never have left the bay. It is almost criminal. Doors and rims can be mounted around that notch to prevent flooding but this boat did not have it. If it did, you could have crossed the ocean.
What a shame.
Agreed, but older people die off Florida's coast all the time as well. Usually they're out in the open ocean without the slightest bit of preparation. No food, no water, no compass, no radio, no navigation gear, no life preservers - usually just fishing gear and beer.
They had no business crossing over to the Bahamas, if that’s what they were trying to do, that’s for sure.
You might disassemble the circuit board and pull off the memory devices.
Please remove me.
Thanks.
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