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Helium. It's not a gas you pay much attention to, unless you work in a handful of very specific industries, enjoy playing with insane overclocking rigs, or have a job filling balloons. But helium is critical in the cryogenics industry, which means it is used in hospital MRI scanners to keep the superconducting magnets operating at the necessary temperature. That makes it difficult for Apple iPhones – they can shut down when exposed to helium, sometimes for days at a time.
A long Reddit thread by Erik Woolridge Specialist Systems and subsequent iFixit write-up lays out the story. During the installation of a new MRI machine at the Morris Hospital near Chicago, Apple iPhones had stopped working. iPhones above the iPhone 6 and Apple Watches were both impacted (the iPhone 5 in the building was not). Apple's official user guide for the iPhone actually mentions this. Apparently, the official Apple fix is as follows:
If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered. Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the battery device should fully discharge in the process. After a week, get your device ready for one hour. Then the device can be turned on again.
We say "apparently" because we can not really find that statement on any Apple guidance, despite the fact that both the original Reddit post and the iFixit story link to the same page of the Apple guide and quote it. Either this site has been removed from the site (we have reached out to the original). Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine did not archive the page.
The best phone you can buy at STP and in Earth's atmosphere. And feel like paying for a smartphone.
Wooldridge has discovered that it has been found to be responsible for the cause of the disease. And according to iFixit, the most likely is Apple's miniaturized clock circuit uses in its devices. Instead of relying on an old-fashioned quartz oscillator, Apple uses a Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System or MEMS silicon solution with a miniaturized clock oscillator instead of a traditional chip-and iFixit's investigation confirmed both that iPhones stop responding when exposed to helium This is a known issue for silicon MEMS in general.
MEMS devices can be susceptible to helium, a senior marketing director for InvenSense Motion, a MEMS company that builds silicon for the Pixel 3, told iFixit:
Helium can diffuse through the fusion bond oxide and cause the cavity to increase. In our pressure sensors, helium could cause the absolute accuracy to a low degree. In our gyro sensors, helium could cause the offset to drift and could cause the oscillation to stop. In any [accelerometer] sensors, helium should have very little impact. All our InvenSense shares should be saved once again by any helium environment.
In this case, the helium is obviously interfering with some fundamental function of the clock generator. Obviously, the practical impact of this bug is most popular. But it's an interesting example of how small glitches can make you think that you'd never even think about it. Trace amounts of helium normally would not be considered an issue for electronic hardware – but the wrong combination of events can lead to devices shutting down and refusing to work for days or even a week.
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