Guy Tries and Fails to Kill an iPhone SE By Freezing and Dropping It

If you own an iPhone, you know there are two things that almost certainly mean death for your device, or at the least a very expensive repair bill: getting wet, and getting dropped.

But that doesn't mean we don't like watching other people's smartphones being smashed beyond recognition or soaked until they glitch and die. Which is exactly why the YouTube channel GizmoSlip wanted to see what would happen if an iPhone SE were submerged in water, frozen for several hours, and then dropped onto concrete from 100 feet up in the air.

Will the phone survive all three levels of the torture gauntlet? Let's take a look.

Level 1: The episode's host puts a brand new iPhone SE into a bowl, turns it on, and makes sure it's completely covered in water. After a couple of minutes of waiting, the phone still seems fine and functioning.

We already know that some of the newer iPhones are outfitted with a gasket made from a silicone foam that does a pretty good job at sealing the device's internal hardware from moderate amounts of moisture and dust. Does this mean the newest breeds of the iPhone are 100 percent waterproof? Nah. But it's still reassuring to know that you can dunk your phone in a bucket of water (I once dropped mine into a pot of hot soup) and probably be alright if you retrieve it quickly enough.

Level 2: Now that the phone is sufficiently submerged, it's placed into a freezer overnight. In the morning, the thing is still going, albeit with a near-dead battery level.

Last year, during New York's brutally cold winter, Motherboard editor Nicholas Deleon pointed out that iPhones are notorious for suddenly dying once the ambient temperature drops below a certain level. This is because its battery, like most other Lithium-Ion batteries, operates best at room temperature. But it appears there are exceptions, because the iPhone in GizmoSlip's video is still truckin'.

Level 3: Finally, the phone is taken to the top of a parking garage, about 100 feet off the ground, and dropped onto the concrete below. The ice shatters, as predicted, but does the iPhone? Surprisingly no! Upon inspection, it seems the phone is suffering from water damage, but there are no visual cracks in the screen or outer casing. It's likely the ice absorbed some of the impact of the fall, and the phone didn't actually hit the ground like it would if a person dropped it out of their hand.

When the device is plugged into a charger, it turns on with no apparent problems. This doesn't mean the iPhone's hardware hasn't been damaged, and I don't advise replicating this experiment on your own smartphone. But it's clear that the iPhone has come a long way from its earlier, more delicate versions that basically shattered if you just looked at them the wrong way.