Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Apple can’t restore iPhone found at sea, but might know someone who can

Williams Pelegrin
By

apple iphone found at sea 6s
Marc-André Julien
The families of two teenagers still lost at sea received bad news from Apple, which told the families it could not recover any data from the iPhone that belonged to one of the boys, reports Sun Sentinel.

14-year-old teenagers Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen have been missing since last July after not returning from a boating trip they took off the Jupiter Inlet, which is located off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida. Their capsized boat was found off the coast of Bermuda by a Norwegian supply ship back in March of this year, along with an iPhone belonging to one of the boys.

Recommended Videos

Since then, Apple engineers have worked to try and recover any data from the iPhone. Unfortunately, last Wednesday, the company told Michael Pike — Pike is an attorney who represents Bill Stephanos, Austin’s father — that it failed to do so, in part because the iPhone runs iOS 8.4. This made it “challenging, if not impossible” for the company to crack the iPhone’s password. Even so, Apple told Pamela Cohen, Perry’s mother, that it would hand the phone to a third party, if the families agree to do so.

Related

“As I said before, I owe it to Perry to exhaust every possible avenue in pursuit of finding out what happened to him,” said Pamela. “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.”

The iPhone has been a point of contention for the Stephanos and Cohens, who can’t agree on what to do with the handset. When the iPhone was first discovered, the Cohen family filed a lawsuit against both the Stephanos and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in an effort to have the phone examined.

Furthermore, the families are at odds as to what to do with the iPhone now that Apple couldn’t crack it. On one hand, the Cohens want to move forward in any possible way in an attempt to get information off of the iPhone. On the other hand, the Stephanos want to retain the iPhone “as a cherished memory of my beloved son,” said Bill.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Williams Pelegrin
Williams Pelegrin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Williams is an avid New York Yankees fan, speaks Spanish, resides in Colorado, and has an affinity for Frosted Flakes. Send…
Here’s how Apple could change your iPhone forever
An iPhone 15 Pro Max laying on its back, showing its home screen.

Over the past few months, Apple has released a steady stream of research papers detailing its work with generative AI. So far, Apple has been tight-lipped about what exactly is cooking in its research labs, while rumors circulate that Apple is in talks with Google to license its Gemini AI for iPhones.

But there have been a couple of teasers of what we can expect. In February, an Apple research paper detailed an open-source model called MLLM-Guided Image Editing (MGIE) that is capable of media editing using natural language instructions from users. Now, another research paper on Ferret UI has sent the AI community into a frenzy.

Read more
There’s a big problem with the iPhone’s Photos app
The Apple iPhone 15 Plus's gallery app.

While my primary device these days continues to be my iPhone 15 Pro, I’ve dabbled with plenty of Android phones since I’ve been here at Digital Trends. One of my favorite brands of phone has been the Google Pixel because of its strong suite of photo-editing tools and good camera hardware.

Google first added the Magic Eraser capability with the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which is a tool I love using. Then, with the Pixel 8 series, Google added the Magic Editor, which uses generative AI to make edits that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. There are also tools like Photo Unblur, which is great for old photographs and enhancing images that were captured with low-quality sensors.

Read more
Why you should buy the iPhone 15 Pro Max instead of the iPhone 15 Pro
Someone holding an iPhone 15 Pro Max outside on a patio, showing the back of the Natural Titanium color.

If you want the best iPhone money can buy in 2024, you have two options: the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. They have the same chipset, similar display technology, nearly identical cameras, etc. It's a really close battle, save for the fact that the iPhone 15 Pro is $200 cheaper.

It might be tempting to save some cash and choose the iPhone 15 Pro, but I recommend you splurge for the larger (and more expensive) iPhone 15 Pro Max. Why? Let me explain.
It's a big iPhone you won't hate using

Read more