There might be a new reason to be paranoid about your iPhone if someone reporting being on a call with a mystery man while no call was displayed on his screen is to be believed.
The video chronicling the strange iPhone doings comes from creator Tristan Galindo (@tristiangalindo), who asked via caption, “WTF just happened.” He posted the video on July 12. Since then, Galindo has drawn more than 379,800 views for the odd happenstance that he claims started when wrapping up a call with a friend.
“I have an iPhone, and the scariest sh*t just happened to me,” Galindo begins. “I wanted to know if this has happened to anybody else before.”
What happened?
He explains that the weirdness began as he got off a call with a female friend.
“They hung up; I hung up, but when I looked at my phone, it still said I was on a phone call, but their name was not up there anymore,” Galindo says. “It was just like a blank phone call. I don’t know how to explain it.”
Galindo claims he said “hello” just for amusement, and a man’s voice said “hello” back to him before his phone experienced a dramatic shutdown.
“I’m not on a call, but this man is talking to me,” he relays. “Next thing I know, my whole phone shuts down; all of my apps are logged out of. It just took me 20 minutes to get back into TikTok.”
“What the f*ck just happened? Was there like a new secret agent that just started today and just f*cked up?” he questioned, jokingly referencing a meme that suggests everyone is assigned an FBI agent who monitors their phone activity.
Galindo finished the video visibly at a loss before saying, “Crazy as f*ck.”
Galindo says in a follow-up video that all of the social media apps he has open now, despite resetting his phone.
@tristiangalindo Wtf just happened #apple #applephone ♬ original sound – Tristian Galindo
Why do iPhones shut off randomly?
A guide from Simply Fixable, getting into the mysteries of iPhones shutting themselves off, noted, “iPhones may turn off at random sometimes, regardless of whether you’re using the latest iPhone 15 or an older model, such as the iPhone 8.”
The article identified three causes, none of which were secret spy activity. Those were:
- Your iPhone’s battery health may have fallen below a certain threshold, meaning that it can no longer hold a charge
- Faulty apps or firmware issues glitch the phone out
- Your phone may be overheating and is shutting itself down as a security measure
Commenters expressed thoughts about what Galindo says happened.
“Your FBI agent just got fired that’s for sure hahaha,” one said, jumping on his theory.
Another offered, “Yea I got a call, missed it. I text them. But they had called me saying I called THEM and left a voicemail. We each sent screenshots to prove our call logs. I was hella confused too lol.”
Someone else suggested, “Maybe someone hacked your phone and added themselves to the phone call and wasn’t paying attention [when] u hung ur conversation up.”
Another said the situation was just too much to deal with. “I’m not even joking when I say I would go phoneless if this happened to me,” they wrote.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Apple via email and to Galindo via email and TikTok direct message.
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