After 10 years of being locked, an iPhone 4S has finally been unlocked

In the early stages of implementing security measures on your iPhone, your device can be locked for decades if you repeatedly enter the wrong passcode. One of those devices was the iPhone 4S of a woman from Jiangsu province, China when nearly 10 years ago, she received a notification that her phone would be locked for 80,000 hours. But after all this time, can users continue to enter the lock code into that phone?

In a short video shared on Chinese social networks, this user explained how she was able to regain access to her iPhone 4S after being locked for 80,000 hours – equivalent to the past 10 years.

” I don’t know who locked it in 2015 ,” she said. At that time, the iPhone displayed a notification that it would unlock after 80,000 hours. It told me it would unlock after 80,000 hours. I thought, isn’t that 10 years? So I changed my phone at that time. But recently, I remembered this .”

So to turn her phone on, she bought a new charging cord and charged it, hoping the wait was over. But when checking, it still shows “288 minutes.” We can also see this message clearly.

She exclaimed, ” Four more hours to go before I can unlock my phone that has been locked for 10 years! Really? You are not lying to me! We’ll know in four hours .”

Four hours later, she posted a follow-up video showing that the wait was finally over. Luckily, it turned out that after not using it for 10 years, she still remembered the passcode and after entering it, the phone unlocked.

In the video, she explains why she didn’t reset the phone. A video of her deceased cat was saved in there. ” The reason I never deleted it and waited so long is because I couldn’t bear to lose that data. Ten years! Oh my God! ”

She then shared images of using the phone, showing off the 4s’ familiar charging sound and its outdated app layout. The phone still runs iOS 6 and has 16GB of memory as well as still using the 30-pin charging port from the beginning. During the 10 years this iPhone was locked, new iPhone generations even went through two charging port changes.

Most people will find 10 years to be too long, but on the Apple Support community forum, a user once shared that their iPhone was locked for 50 years.

Most people will find 10 years to be too long, but on the Apple Support community forum, a user once shared that their iPhone was locked for 50 years. Similarly, a post on the 9to5Mac forum refers to an iPhone being disabled for “23,614,974 minutes” – equivalent to 45 years.

Currently, the waiting time of decades when entering the wrong passcode is no longer available on the iPhone. The user has 10 incorrect password entries. From the 4th incorrect entry, the time will be 1 minute, then gradually increase to 5 minutes and 1 hour each time. The maximum lockout period is now only 8 hours. It will then be locked forever. In such cases, the only solution is to erase all the phone’s data and do a factory reset/.