The point is that putting a wet device in rice will dry it out, but it will also pull all the starch from the rice and potentially into your phone, causing more problems than it would fix. Silica packets are always the way forward.

I mean Pegasus is an ongoing no click vulnerability within iPhone, it stands to reason there are other professional companies with the ability(and crucially desire) to build solutions that can break iPhone encryption, likely due to architectural/software flaws that cryptographic ones.

Apple refusing and Apple being able to do something are two different things, although I think in that case the FBI were ultimately able to brute force the phone in question.

The FBI is American, this case is in India, where the laws are significantly different. It’s entirely possible-without having an in depth knowledge on the matter-that encryption standards are mandated to be different in India, or companies are mandated to be able to unlock their devices if required by LE.

This is in India not the US, the laws are very different.

This.

Apple has certain rules in place, but they also have to comply with local law if they wish to sell devices in that country.

Much like them being forced to move Chinese user data to Chinese servers under the control of government workers. Now this doesn’t mean they can instantly access all user data because that’s not how encryption works, but it’s an example of them complying by force with local law.

Fair, did you buy it new? Still, batteries degrade and in some cases quite significantly depending on usage. Apple has been previously sued for their dodgy business with throttling and battery management, they aren’t doing anything behind the scenes to force people to buy new models if that’s what you’re thinking.

A 3 year old iPhone’s capacity has dropped by 21%? Pretty good going, mine was at 86% a year in.