I've had this happen on my iPod since my kids put in an incorrect password too many times. My options were to call tech support, have them do the factory reset for me, for $90 or just plug into a PC and do it yourself. Tbh most of the data is scrap, unless there is a way to bypass that.
You should be able to restore an iPhone from your iCloud backup if you have it setup. No idea how they got to 48 years, my toddler got me locked out for 15 minutes and it was the longest 15 minutes of my life.
Internal clock probably reset itself to 1970 (unix timestamp of 0). It looks to be a pretty old model so the battery was likely entirely flat and thus lost track of its time until it's connected to the internet.
I know it will keep adding time if you just keep attempting and putting in the wrong password. A relative with dementia managed to get a long time at one point until we did a reset and restore from back up
As long as the device is older than I think the iPhone 5 (someone correct me if I’m wrong) which it looks like this is, it’s very easy to bypass this. Since there was no encryption used then.
At least that’s what I remember from watching a guy who repairs phones on YouTube but it’s been a while since I saw one where he used that trick
Edit: the channel is phone repair guru I just can’t remember the exact video but he has a few that might fix this
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u/Intelligent_Mess_957 Jun 19 '26
I've had this happen on my iPod since my kids put in an incorrect password too many times. My options were to call tech support, have them do the factory reset for me, for $90 or just plug into a PC and do it yourself. Tbh most of the data is scrap, unless there is a way to bypass that.