Farmer's Lost iPhone Survives 9-Month, 7,000-Mile Journey

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Drop an iPhone, and you run the risk of cracking its beautiful glass screen. But bury it in 280,000 pounds of grain, and it might just survive a trip around the world.

Oklahoma farmer Kevin Whitney made this inadvertent discovery when he lost his iPhone 4 while working in one of his grain silos, according to local TV station KFOR.

"I had it in my pocket, bent over to work on a hopper bottom door, and it fell out of my pocket into the grain pit," Whitney said.

The phone was gone â€" or so it seemed. Nine months later, Whitney received a long-distance call from Kashima, Japan. "Is this Kevin Whitney?" the person asked. "Did you lose a cell phone?"

Farmer Kevin Whitney holds his recovered phone.

A factory worker in Japan found Whitney's phone in a grain shipment out of Convent, Louisiana. Because it wasn't locked, the worker was able to figure out that Whitney owned it, and how to contact him.

The phone, which suffered no damage, was soon back in Whitney's hands. A video by KFOR, below, shows the farmer flipping though precious photos stored on his phone, including those from his daughter's wedding.

Whitney didn't detail how the phone survived, but we noticed in KFOR's video that his phone was protected by a Speck cellphone case, which may have helped it cope with the jostling of a nearly 7,000-mile trip. Some of the company's cases come with a translucent screen cover, which could have protected Whitney's phone from getting scratched.

For its part, Speck also noticed Whitney's case, and tweeted about it:

Speck confirmed to Mashable that Whitney's phone in the video is sporting its $34.95 black "CandyShell" for the iPhone 4 and 4S.

A company spokesperson said this kind of story is not unusual. While Whitney has not yet confirmed that his phone was protected by a Speck case during its long trip, the spokesperson said the company's cases are tested against military drop standards, and that "there’s no question that our case contributed to the phone’s survival."

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