Two cell phones were recovered from the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet that had an inflight explosive episode as it flew across Oregon over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Friday just as the plane was making its way to Ontario, California.
During a news conference on Sunday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that the devices were recovered by residents in the area where the door plug fell from the structure.
“Some community members found a cell phone in a yard and a cell phone on the side of the road and contacted us and handed them in,” she said.
One of the devides, which appears to be an iPhone, still appeared to be completely intact and functional after it dropped from 16,000 feet in the sky. The cell phone still had part of a charger attached to it.
One of those residents appeared to have posted his discovery to X, formerly Twitter, writing, “found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282.”
Can we talk about how the phone did not have a screen lock? What?
Let me complain here about the screen lock settings on iOS.
The iOS settings for the phone’s screen auto-lock has 30-seconds, 1-min, 2-min, 3-min, 4-min, 5-min and never.
There are many scenarios for me where 5 minutes is just too damn short. Ergo, I’ll never use the 1-4-min settings. This is just a dumb set of options IMHO. Why is there not a 10/15/20-min setting?
So, I end up setting it to never auto-lock as this annoys me somewhat less. Still quite annoying, but this would explain why my phone might still be unlocked after being blasted out the new airlock.
Face ID keeps your phone unlocked as long as you’re looking at the screen. Does that not do it for you?