“U.S. farmer Kevin Whitney thought his iPhone was lost for good when it fell into a grain elevator last year,” Justin Juozapavicius reports for The Associated Press. “Eight months later, his phone was returned unscathed after it was found in Japan.”
“Whitney lost his phone in October after it slipped out of his shirt pocket as he was unloading grain from a truck into a silo holding roughly 290,000 bushels of grain,” Juozapavicius reports. “‘I knew it was lost forever and there was no retrieving the thing,’ said Whitney, 53.”
“In late May, Whitney received a phone call from Eric Slater with the Zen-Noh Grain Corporation,” Juozapavicius reports. “‘I get a call from a guy who works with this grain company in Convent, Louisiana, saying a guy at a feed mill in Japan found the phone,’ Whitney said. Slater said he charged the phone and scrolled through to find Whitney’s pictures and called him. Whitney was shocked the phone made it through such an ordeal in pristine condition.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ashiya Joe” for the heads up.]
Kind of a corny story.
Sorry, had to.
A-mazing!
Or a-maizing?
Actually, a “wheaty” story.
I’m not stalking you, but there is a kernel of truth to your a-maizing, but corny comment! Now for a bit more fertilizer…don’t smoke the silk.
It would be interesting to know of all the phones retrieved in this way, what percentage of each type can be charged and restarted successfully.
I guess it’s a good think it wasn’t an iPhone 5S with fingerprint authentication.
Too late in the day to avoid typos…
If the corn had been dried properly it may have acted like a silica sack used to keep electronics dry.
You mean loosing your iPhone in a silo is a common occurrence?
LOSING, NOT LOOSING
He was definitely not a cornhole
Now all the pictures come out grainy…..
Were the pictures they found “Grainy”
This one was the better construction of the pun, so I gave it my vote.
A Samsung would be swiftly tossed into the dumpster as it’ll likely be covered in neckbeard emissions.
A different kind of kernel panic, that’s for sure.
Surprised someone didn’t say something about there being a grain of truth to the story.
Apple should create a ‘museum’ on their campus where stories like this can be featured. The owners of such iPhones that survived 8 month trip to Japan, or saved a soldiers life or whatever, can send in their iPhones with the story behind it to Apple and Apple can replace it with a similar current model.
I think the fact that it ended up in Japan contributed significantly to its safe return.
Had a friend who completely wrecked his car – rolled it. He was in the hospital for almost two weeks. When he finally was able to clean the car out before it was totaled, he found his iPhone frozen in ice on the floor of the car. He took it home and thawed it… it worked! He couldn’t believe and said he would never buy any other brand of phone.
This is an example of why the world is not going to Hell in a hand basket. 🙂
What? The excellence of design and construction that preserves function across a maze of adventure, and validates Man as the penultimate maker of tools? Or the opportunity, taken by all comers, to demonstrate a lucid and joyful acquaintance with the English language and its quirks, through the agency of puns and like wordplay? Both, I want to think.
Well I was thinking about how the final surprised recipient of the iPhone, in Japan, was so thoughtful. But I will take your thoughts over mine any day. 🙂
Please don’t sell yourself short, on my account. Your thought is more immediate and humane than mine, I admit I dwell in the abstract overmuch. And you are right, on reflexion that call from Japan must have struck the farmer dumb…like having a wallet returned with all the money intact?
So it went all the way to Japan packed in 290,000 bushels of grain? Sounds like the most secure packing job in history.