One thing you should never do as a parent is give your kid your phone. Honestly, why you would give a human being - who is still content to poop their pants and rub spaghetti hoops all over their face - something that is worth over $700, is completely beyond me. But, some parents do and, unfortunately for them, they have to deal with the consequences.
If you've ever been drunk and owned an iPhone, you will know all about the tumultuous experience that is getting locked out of your phone. We've all done it: we have a little bit too much to drink and when trying to order an Uber home, we've put the incorrect passcode in six times and been shut out. While this temporary security measure only lasts a minute, it is terrifying at the time.
But while those horrifying 60 seconds may leave you suffering from a mild-cardiac arrest as you realize that your entire life is on your iPhone, it's nothing compared to what this mom had to endure at the hands of her toddler.
A two-year-old boy in Shanghai managed to shut down his mom's iPhone by repeatedly putting in the wrong passcode. Writing on Mumsnet, the mother said that her darling son was allowed to user her phone to watch "educational videos." However, when she went to get her phone off of him, she found that he had entered the wrong passcode so many times that the phone had locked itself down for 25 million minutes.
"I couldn’t really wait for 48 years and tell my grandchild it was your father’s mistake," the woman said, according to the South China Morning Post.
According to an Apple technician at the Apple store in Shanghai, the woman would either have to wait years to try and input her password again, or she would need to wipe the entire contents of the handset and re-install the files.
However, the technician, who has been named as Wei Chunlong, also said that this is a fairly common occurrence. According to Wei, he has seen other cases of phones being locked for the equivalent of 80 years due to the same issue. “In this woman’s case, the only way out [without waiting] is to erase all the phone data and do a factory reset,” he said.
Apple's security system locks the phone for an increasing amount of time-based on how many times the wrong passcode is entered. Looking at their tech support pages, it seems like toddlers shutting down phones is a fairly common issue, with plenty of people claiming to have suffered the same fate.
So there you have it, next time you think of handing over your ridiculous expensive phones into the grubby hands of a toddler - don't. If not for the sake of your phone getting locked down, just think about their dirty hands rubbing all over your phone... I'm alright, thanks.