Why iPhone and other Apple products are vulnerable to helium
The interior of the mobiles is composed of hundreds of small pieces, all of them assembled with care. But if water or dust gets inside the components can be damaged and the device stop working. To avoid this the manufacturers seal the tickets and even in some models like the iPhone Xs we have IP68 resistance that allows us to submerge the mobile. However, as a result of a fortuitous accident it has become clear that the iPhone is vulnerable to helium .
The most striking is not only that it seriously affects the operation, but that it happens with other Apple devices such as the iPad or Apple Watch. Although the same does not seem to happen with most Android phones. We will explain what is the reason for this technical failure, why Apple's products are affected and what is the response that the company gives to this peculiar phenomenon.
Eric Woolridge is a systems administrator at the Morris Hospital in Illinois. Through a detailed text in the subreddit of Sysadmin, he describes how he discovered that the iPhone stopped working when it came into continuous contact with helium gas. On October 8, multiple hospital workers came to him because his iPhone had stopped working for no apparent reason. Just that day the hospital had installed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine which led Eric to think that there was some kind of magnetic emission that damaged the iPhone. It was very strange, since only the Apple devices in the center were affected. All the iPhone, but also several iPads and Apple Watch, and up to 40 people, according to Woolridge. However, no Samsung, Motorola or Android mobile appeared with problems. Nor an old iPhone 5.
After this "discovery", several users have tried to replicate the problem in their homes and have seen how it effectively repeats itself. Helium affects the iPhone and blocks them completely . They do not connect to the mobile network, they do not load and they do not react to screen touches either. Although after a while they are slowly recovering . After the hospital incident, the system administrator comments that several of the Apple Watch still do not have the touch screen correctly even after a few days.
The answer to this situation is in the helium. And what does it have to do with the resonance machine? Basically that at the time of installation there was a helium leak and up to 120 liters were dispersed by the hospital for five hours. A significant amount of helium and enough to affect the devices.
