I can’t even get my old Geocities site back and how I wish I’d archived all the pseudo-HTML I plugged into my MySpace homepage over the years.
Without power, the data on the flash storage is very likely not going to last 250 years. So whatever they wrote in the Notes app is probably not going to be recoverable if the iPhone is found and powered on 250 years from now.
this is expected. The orange color iPhone pro color is unique and special due to its vibrant and very life iPhone pro color has ever made. It is well deserved to be treasured in iPhone history and time capsule. I do not think I will trade in my orange iPhone pro max. The special living color iPhone pro max should be kept as a keepsake as iPhone pro max might not have other bright and lovely color anymore.
An iPhone 17 Pro Max in Cosmic Orange has been sealed inside a 250 year time capsule as part of America's Semiquincentennial celebrations, with the device not due to be seen again until the 23rd century.
America250, the congressionally appointed nonprofit leading the 250th anniversary celebrations, announced that "America's Time Capsule" was officially sealed and buried at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on July 4, 2026, to be reopened in 2276.
The iPhone was included through America250's "America Innovates" initiative as a representative of the cutting edge of American innovation and technology in 2026, with the device showcasing advances in handheld computing, imaging, and connectivity that have transformed how people work, communicate, and create in the 21st century. The device contains "digital artifacts" in the Notes app, intended to give whoever opens the capsule in 2276 a small window into everyday life in 2026.
The capsule itself was built to give the iPhone and everything else inside it the best possible chance of surviving intact. Developed with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and preservation experts at the Library of Congress, it uses a 900 pound, precision milled stainless steel cylinder sealed with indium, a soft metal that deforms under compression to fill microscopic imperfections in the sealing groove. It was covered with a 1,100 pound stainless steel bell jar that creates a protective air pocket to keep the vessel dry underground.
Beyond the iPhone, the capsule holds contributions from all 56 states and territories and all three branches of the federal government, including a feather from Civil War era bald eagle mascot "Old Abe" (Wisconsin), fabric from the Wright brothers' 1903 aircraft (Ohio), and an AI generated response from Anthropic's Claude submitted by California imagining the state 250 years from now.
Article Link: iPhone 17 Pro Max Sealed in Time Capsule Until 2276
If they've built a storage chip that they're confident can last 250 years unpowered, and it has the storage capacity for a full version of the latest iOS, then they've accomplished something that they'd surely monetise. That kind of storage technology is desperately needed, and even if there are caveats that mean it wouldn't be as useful for iPhones intended for consumers (e.g., maybe read/write speeds are too slow relative to what consumers are used to in phones nowadays), the longevity of the media alone would make it extremely attractive for various applications. Funnily enough, one such application would be a time capsule (of digital information)!
Which means the OS itself will be corrupted too. Not to mention iOS might require reactivation after such a long time spent offline. Can't swap out the NAND chip and flash an ipsw either because there's not going to be any servers that still accept connections from such an old and insecure device. If Apple themselves even exist! In the best case scenario you'll be greeted with an itunes recovery animation and imagine how earthlings might have lived 250 years ago.
California also included a segment of fusion superconductor and a qubit quantum computing chip (among other things). And the Library of Congress included a ton of digital material stored in a “molecular storage device” that encodes information as synthetic DNA, so I’d argue they captured our current state of innovation pretty well.
Id suggest nothing has been done to it and it will be nothing more then a swollen lump of trash for the remnants of humanity to look at in 250 years.
