An Indian teenager was accused of emotional blackmail after going on a hunger strike for three days to pressure his poor mother into buying him an iPhone.

A short video shot by a smartphone shop owner in India went viral last week for featuring a teenage boy who confessed to going on a hunger strike for three days to convince his mother to buy him a new iPhone. The woman, who reportedly makes a living by selling flowers outside a temple, is also featured in the video and has a facial expression that pretty much says everything about her inner struggle. Shared by Indian journalist Abhishek on X (formerly Twitter), the video has been viewed over a million times and has sparked a heated debate about gadgets as a status symbol and the entitlement of younger generations.

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A UK man is trying to take tech giant Apple to court for £5 million ($6.3 million), accusing the company of revealing his private messages with other women to his wife by synchronizing his iPhone with the family iMac.

In the last few years of his marriage, Richard (not the man’s real name) had been soliciting the services of sex workers whom he had messaged using his personal iPhone. He had always been very careful to delete the messages from his phone but claimed not to have known that Apple makes it possible to share messages via its various platforms (iPhone, iPad, or iMac) when logging into the same account. One day, when his wife logged into the same family account on the iMac, she discovered years of spicy messages between Richard and multiple other women, who turned out to be sex workers. She ended up divorcing him and walking away with over $6.3 million. Richard blames Apple for everything and he wants the American company to compensate him.

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A Russian man was recently arrested after stealing 53 new iPhones on his very first day of work at a Moscow electronics store.

Earlier this month, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs published a short clip of a man “cleaning up” an electronics store in Moscow and filling a small suitcase and several bags with dozens of iPhone cases. The 44-year-old unnamed man doesn’t seem bothered by the surveillance camera and, after trying and failing to change its facing direction with a cleaning mop, he simply carries on with his business. After taking 53 brand-new iPhones and 53,000 rubles ($570) from the register, he casually walks out the front door. Believe it or not, this was the man’s first day on the job as a sales manager at the electronics store…

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Caviar, a Russian company that specializes in luxurious smartphone customization, recently unveiled the iPhone Diamond Snowflake, the most expensive iPhone ever made.

The iPhone 15 hasn’t even been launched yet, and it’s already advertised as the most expensive iPhone ever made. Not the stock version, though! That one is expensive enough, but it’s nowhere near the Diamond Snowflake designed by Russian luxury customization company, Caviar. This uber-exclusive version of Apple’s newest handheld features a custom case made of 18K white gold and inlaid with no less than 570 individual diamonds, as well the pendant of the Snowflake Graff necklace made by famed English jeweler Graff. The pendant itself is made of platinum, white gold with inlaid diamonds. The price of this handmade masterpiece – a whopping $562,700.

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Unable to fight the desire for a phone she could not afford to buy, a Chinese woman ended up stealing a new iPhone by ripping through the anti-theft cord with her teeth at an Apple Store.

The woman, surnamed Qiu, became the talk of the internet in China earlier this month, after the security cameras at an Apple Store in Fuzhou City, China’s Fujian Province, caught her stealing an iPhone in a rather unusual way. Footage that has since gone viral online shows the woman entering an electronics store and heading straight for the smartphone section, where she proceeds to inspect the device on display. She can be seen glancing around furtively to see if anyone else is around, before grabbing an iPhone and starting to chew on the anti-theft cord securing the device to the display stand.

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A heartless couple in India was reportedly arrested for selling their 8-month-old baby to buy an iPhone 14 and make Instagram reels while traveling.

Last week, Indian media reported the shocking case of a young couple from West Bengal who were so obsessed with Apple’s newest handheld that they sold their toddler in order to buy one. Jaydev and Sathi Ghosh started attracting the attention of their neighbors in North 24 Parganas when they started traveling around the state and flashing their brand-new Apple iPhone 14. The couple had been known to earn a meager monthly income and had often struggled financially in the past, so the drastic change didn’t make any sense, especially since it had coincided with the mysterious disappearance of their 8-month-old son, something that Jaydev and Sathi didn’t seem at all concerned with…

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A Minnesota man who lost his iPhone 14 while kayaking in Hawaii got the shock of his life when a complete stranger got in touch and told him that they had found his handheld and that it was working perfectly.

27-year-old Zach Siggelkow of St. Anthony Village, Minnesota, was on vacation at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, with his mother and sister last December. On the last day, Siggelkow decided to go kayaking, despite his mother’s warning, and that’s when tragedy struck. He had taken his iPhone 14 out to film some Air Force planes flying over, when a big wave hit the side of the kayak, causing it to overturn. As he struggled to find his paddle and get back into the kayak, Zach realized he had lost both his smartphone and his sunglasses. At first, he was pretty bummed out about it, but then he realized there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he just moved on with his life. Until 33 days later, when he got an email from someone claiming to have found his iPhone on the bottom of the ocean…

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Chinese iPhone 14 scalpers are apparently struggling to recover their investment as they are forced to sell the handheld for less than the MSRP.

Like it or not, scalpers are an integral part of the free market, and there is little anyone can do about them. Whether it’s the Playstation 5 or the newest iPhone, they’re always ready to scoop up whatever inventory is available and sell it for outrageous profits to diehard fans with little patience and loaded pockets. That said, scalping does have its risks, and the recent iPhone 14 launch is a clear example of that. Chinese media has been reporting that scalpers have been forced to sell their brand new iPhone 14 smartphones on the street for less than the official launch price just to cut their losses.

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A man who lost his iPhone 10 months ago while canoeing on a river in England was shocked to have it returned in working order by someone who spotted it on the bottom of that same river.

Earlier this month, Miguel Pacheco was canoeing with his family on the River Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, when he spotted something blue in the water. It turned out to be an iPhone covered with mud and full of water, but instead of throwing it back in, Pacheco decided to take it with him and see if it still worked. Chances were low, considering where the phone had been found, but after using an air compressor to dry it out and placing it in the airing cupboard overnight, Miguel Pacheco was shocked to see the charging icon pop up on the screen when he plugged it in.

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When gold, platinum and precious stones aren’t enough to sell custom iPhones, it’s time to bring out the good stuff, and there are few things more intriguing than real dinosaur teeth.

Caviar has been producing custom luxury variants of popular iPhone models for many years now, but this year they’re doing something completely different. After producing various types of gold-plated and diamond-encrusted iPhones, the Russian company is now introducing real dinosaur teeth as part of its arsenal. The recently-unveiled Tyrannophone is an iPhone 13 Pro made from a lightweight composite material featuring 24 K gold-plated alloy inserts. But the truly special thing about the Tyrannophone is the embossed tyrannosaurus head on the back, more precisely one of the dinosaur’s teeth, which is actually an 80 million-year-old T-Rex tooth.

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A Japanese man who has been struggling to sell a misprinted iPhone 11 Pro found himself inundated with tempting offers from buyers after photos of his device became the subject of fake news circulating on social media.

A few days ago, during my daily internet surfing sessions, I came across a South Korean article about an iPhone with a misaligned Apple logo that had apparently sold for $2,700. The explanation was that Apple’s quality control is so stringent that whenever design errors slip by, the handheld in question becomes somewhat of a collectible. Only it turned out that, like many other internet stories, this was just fake news picked up by several popular news outlets that didn’t bother doing any research.

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A man who accidentally lost his iPhone 11 while paddling on a lake in March of last year recently posted photos of the handheld miraculously retrieved from the bottom of the lake after more than a year. The handheld was in need of a recharge, but otherwise worked perfectly!

The owner of the iPhone, a Taiwanese man named Chen Yj, recently took to a public Facebook group to tell the amazing story of how his handheld survived a year underwater. Writing on the Bangfu1 Commune Facebook group, Chen said that he lost his iPhone 11 in March of 2020, while paddling on Sun Moon Lake, in Taiwan. Photos shared on the public group show him wearing an orange vest, with the Apple handheld around his neck. At one point, the man falls off his board, and the phone can be seen sinking to the bottom of the lake. Little did Chen know that he would not only retrieve his phone a year later, but it would be in perfect working condition.

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A Thai teenager recently got his five minutes of internet fame, after going online to buy a cheap iPhone, only to receive a coffee table shaped like the Apple smartphone.

Usually, when a luxury product is being sold for much cheaper than its market price, you owe it to yourself to check that everything is legit, but sometimes you just get carried away and push that ‘buy’ button to make sure someone doesn’t snatch it from under your noise. That’s exactly what this teenage Apple fan from Thailand did recently, in hope of getting a much-coveted handheld for cheap. Only he knew that something was definitely wrong when the package was delivered…

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The new Apple iPhone 12 was only announced a few days ago, but if you can’t wait until its official launch, or if you can’t afford to buy it when it comes out, you can simply make your old handheld look like one.

Chinese media recently reported on a popular accessory that iPhone fans have been raving about online – a new case that basically turns older Apple smartphones, like the iPhone X or iPhone 11 into a replica of the yet-to-be-released iPhone 12. Only days after the official announcement of the iPhone 12, the new case was already available in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei Electronics Market for a reported 450 yuan ($67) for the iPhone X and 350 yuan ($52) for the iPhone 11.

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A viral TikTok video of what looks like a concrete fence decorated with hundreds of iphone 6 smartphones has been doing the rounds online in Asia, sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

Ok, so the iPhone 6 isn’t the newest Apple handheld, but I actually have a couple of friends who can’t afford to upgrade to a newer iPhone and are very happy with their sixth generation Apple smartphone, so to see this model used as decorative tiles for a fence was a bit of a shock. And I apparently wasn’t the only one surprised by the TikTok video posted by Vietnamese user @minhhienapple last week, as his clip showing the fence of a rural home decorated with hundreds of iPhones has so far been viewed over 1.7 million times.

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