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IPhone 4 Survives 1,000 Foot Fall From Plane
tekgoblin writes "From the article: 'US Air Force Combat controller Ron Walker had lost his iPhone 4 from his aircraft during flight. He works as a Jump Master, which is where he would ensure the airplane was in the correct position when he sends parachute jumpers out. The plane was moving at 150 mph and while looking out the door of the plane to find necessary ground landmarks his pocket opened and his iPhone flew out. When he noticed his phone fell, he thought all was lost. Upon landing and sharing the story with friends he installed the Find My iPhone app on one of their phones and went looking for his phone. He expected it to be battered from the fall but found the phone to be 100% un-damaged from the fall. The phone was protected by a Griffin Motif TPU iPhone case but it isn't clear whether the case protected the phone from the fall or the fact that it was cushioned by the brush that it hit.'"
The pilot was holding it wrong.
My old iPhone 4 shattered in a 3-foot fall from my pocket to the concrete...
The new one hasn't had a scratch on it since, though.
iPhones are like cats, dropping them from less than 2 meters doesn't give them enough time to brace for impact. Drop it higher.
I'll probably get modded down for this but I can't help it. I am in a giddy mood today.
.. dropped calls.
(Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. If you're unlucky).
Really lucky.
My colleague's broke when it fell off her desk.
Your colleague should have kept a small shrubbery at the side of her desk to cushion falling objects (assuming that's the morale of the article).
There, now you've read the entire article.
I don't think you know the gravity of what you've done. You've just popped the cherries of millions of the 98% of long-time /. readers who have never once RTFA. Now that they've had a taste, could it be a dawn of a new era?
I believe it was saved by the rush of apple users that threw themselves on the ground to cushion its fall.
No.
Requiem for the American Dream
You missed your chance to make one hell of a "The Gods Must Be Crazy" reference.
Would make for an awesome episode, though.
Explains why the Knights wanted a shrubbery. How Monty Python knew about iPhones back then is anybody's guess though...
-Space for rent
Well my pocketknife survived an orbital re-entry, so fuck all of you.
Well see, that's how it survived then. The phone was probably a 3G model so 1G would have not affect on it.
Anyone know the tumbling terminal velocity of an iPhone? After a certain height it's all the same (until you start getting high enough that the iPhone will burn up in the atmosphere).
(monty)An African or European iPhone? (/monty)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If only he were as effective with this line on girlfriends...
As a test, I started dropping an iPhone from various heights onto concrete. It remained undamaged until I got up to about 22 feet. At that point, the concrete got a little scuff mark on it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!