A young woman from Jiangsu Province in China gained online attention after sharing her ten-year effort to unlock an iPhone 4s. In a video shared on Chinese social media, she explained how she finally regained access to the phone, which had been locked for 80,000 hours — about ten years.
“I have no idea who locked it in 2015,” she said. At that time, the iPhone displayed a message saying it would unlock in 80,000 hours. “It told me it would unlock after 80,000 hours. I thought, isn’t that ten years? So I switched my phone at that time. But recently, I remembered it.”
So to power up the phone, she bought a new charging cable and charged it, hoping the wait was over. But when she checked, it still showed “288 minutes.” We, as well, can clearly see the message.
She exclaimed, “There are still four hours before I can unlock this phone that has been locked for ten years! Is this true? You are not lying to me! We’ll know in another four hours.”
Four hours later, she posted a follow-up video showing that the wait time was finally over. Lucky enough, she remembered the passcode and, after entering it, the phone unlocked.
In the video, she explained why she didn’t reset the phone. A video of her deceased cat was saved on it. “The reason I never wiped it and waited this long is because I couldn’t bear to lose that data. Ten years! Oh my god!”
She then shared glimpses of the phone in use, showing the familiar charging sound of the 4s and its outdated app layout. The phone ran iOS 6 and had 16GB of storage.
If you’re wondering whether this situation is unusual, let us clarify—it can happen with older iPhones. On the Apple Support community, one user reported their iPhone had been locked for 50 years.
Similarly, a post on 9to5Mac’s forum mentioned an iPhone disabled for “23614974 minutes”—about 45 years. In such cases, the only solution is to erase all the phone’s data and perform a factory reset, unless you’re willing to wait it out.
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