Modern smartphones can do some wonderful things but sometimes they may do something that they wasn’t designed for, and today we have news of an iPhone 5S that saves a soldiers life while fighting for his country.

The image that you can see on this page is of Staff Sgt. Shaun Frank and his Apple iPhone 5S which stopped some of the shrapnel entering his body after a teenage suicide bomber set of an explosion close by.

He was wounded but if it wasn’t for the handset his injuries would have been far worse and maybe even fatal, and obviously the handset was damaged beyond repair. When the device was sent back to Apple to see if it was covered by their insurance they said he could either keep the handset or get a new one.

Obviously he wanted to keep it as a memento for saving his life so was without a handset, while a campaign saw some people donating money to replace the device. Eventually three months down the line after the story emerged Apple did replace the device while letting the soldier keep his life saver.

Are you surprised it took Apple so long to do this?

Source: KSL, NYP via Phone Arena.