China: A two-year-old boy has locked his mothers iPhone for an equivalent of 47 years after repeatedly putting the wrong passcode.
According to the South China Morning Post, the mother of the boy gave the toddler the phone to watch an educational video only to return and find that the phone has been disabled for 25 million minutes after repeated attempts of the wrong passcode.
Each time the wrong the passcode was pressed, the phone was disabled for a period of time. repeated wrong attempts accumulated disabled period to 25 million minutes.
A technician at an Apple store in Shanghai told the woman to either wait for 47 years for the phone to return to the normal state so that she can unlock it, or just wipe the device clean and then re-install the files back.
The technician said that there have been several cases of phones getting locked for an equivalent of over 80 years by the same method.
This incident happened in January and the woman has said that she has waited for two months, but there sees no sign of the problem been rectified.
"I couldn't really wait for 47 years and tell my grandchild it was your father's mistake," the woman said.
Apple's built-in lockout feature was built for security reasons so as to keep bad actors from breaking into the device. The device becomes disabled for a period of time after six concurrent incorrect PIN attempts. However, the feature also give the user option to wipe the device's data and restore it after 10 incorrect attempts.