Bad things happen when you carelessly leave a kid alone with your iPhone.
A two-year-old kid in Shanghai was left alone at home with his mom’s locked iPhone and when he tried to enter the wrong passcode several times, ended up disabling (locking) the phone for around 47 years, according to a report from the South China Morning Post.
The SCMP reports that the child was supposed to be watching educational videos, but wrapped up in the iPhone’s lock screen and, apparently, entered the wrong password over and over. As you know, every time an incorrect passcode is entered, the iPhone would lock up and force you to wait longer each time.
When the mother returned home and checked her iPhone (model un-known), she found that it had been disabled for 25 million minutes or roughly 47 years. She then took the phone to an Apple store, where a technician told her she would have to factory reset the device, which deletes all your data and settings or there is another option of waiting 47 years to unlock it. She obviously chose to factory reset the phone, as she said, “I couldn’t really wait for 47 years and tell my grandchild it was your father’s mistake.”
The technician at the Apple store also said that there had been cases of phones locked for the equivalent of over 80 years by the same method. It must be noted that in normal cases, in your regular non-jailbroken iPhones, if you enter the wrong passcode six times consecutively, the device will be disabled, but only for one minute.
Well, this incident is certainly a lesson for parents handing their phone to their children to play with it, without keeping an eye on them. To have a back up of your phone on iCloud or regular iTunes backups, are always been a wise option.
