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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.
That WAS the article, minus the last sentence.
So we know now that the iPhone 4 can survive a 1000ft fall as long as it doesnâ(TM)t hit concrete, I wonder if Apple will talk about this at one of their next iPhone announcements.
There, now you've read the entire article.
I always knew that the Chinese manufacture the best equipment in the world.
Big deal, I've lost my Nokia E51 from 4000 feet during parachute operations, same situation, fell into a bush. Only found it because of the anti-theft GPS Tracking software on it.
But can your iPhone survive the building it's in being blown up by an RPG? The original Gameboy has. It still plays Tetris to this day.
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.
INTO brush. Isn't this going to be true of most gadgets with no moving parts?
An old laptop of mine resisted a car collision, but the screen cracked one time it fell ONE FOOT HIGH from the ground (and flat).
There is some sort of law in electronics that makes a gentle caress the most common cause of electronics death. You can shot devices with a shotgun and not do as much damage as treating it with care.
.. dropped calls.
(Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. If you're unlucky).
Small objects have proportionately more drag for their weight so their terminal velocity may not be that fast, reached earlier (so overheight doesn't matter) and damage less.
Another case of why there are no flying pigs -- weight increases as the cube of length, while drag increases as the square. So lots of flying bugs.
Ha! "iPhone falls 1000 feet and remains undamaged, doesn't even wake up."
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
I'd be more interested if Flight Safety contacted him about improperly securing dangerous FOD.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Really lucky.
My colleague's broke when it fell off her desk.
Maybe its your colleague that`s not lucky.
I guess these guys are not CSI, or even scientist for that matter.... ....
>or the fact that it was cushioned by the brush that it hit
Of course if you found it in the bush, then it was cushioned, as anyone knows that some material to cushion the fall takes some of the impact away from the object, and that means as well that it landed on grass or dirt underneath, and not pure cement (i never seen a brush grow in the middle of a street)....so again another reason why it was ok, I am glad that his iphone is ok, as I have one, and could not live without it, but get a clue, it was not apple or the cell phone, it was the environment it landed in,
If you really want a test.., try letting it fall from the plane into water, then go find it, then tell me that it is not wet, and its a miracle, then i will praise apple for creating the perfect phone, until then....
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).
I believe it was saved by the rush of apple users that threw themselves on the ground to cushion its fall.
The moral of this story is "Please buy an iPhone now not an Android phone so we can invest your money into designing a phone that can be used to make calls whilst being held with a human hand."
Disclaimer: I am the secretary of the Manchester (UK) Apple-Haters Association (AHA) so am guaranteed to produce comments from an an unbiased viewpoint.
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.
It would read 1G after it had hit the ground (stationary lying on the ground), but during the impact, it would be far more than that. It would read 0G during freefall (as this is the definition of freefall). The deceleration as it hits the ground would be very high, (possibly even as much as 100G+) because the time to decelerate is so small, and the distance over which it decelerates is tiny.
Explains why the Knights wanted a shrubbery. How Monty Python knew about iPhones back then is anybody's guess though...
-Space for rent
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...
Terminal velocity should be much further than a few feet. Humans, which are not particularly aerodynamic, take a couple thousand feet to hit terminal velocity. A more compact object, like an iPhone, should have a higher terminal velocity. Since this one fell 1,000 feet, it's unlikely it hit terminal velocity at all.
I don't know, an iPhone is small and slim but in a free-fall I doubt it would stick to a nice "dive" with the short-edge facing the wind-resistance. It would probably be a tumble.
Plus, the iPhone is light. While mass doesn't affect the acceleration, it does come into play with wind resistance. If you had 2 objects the same dimensions as an iPhone but one was made of lead and another made of plastic the lead one would reach a much higher terminal velocity because the force of the free-fall would be greater and could thus overpower the force from the wind resistance.
I imagine the terminal velocity is less than 150 MPH from the airplane, so I imagine the iPhone aero-braked the horizontal velocity some.
But I'll leave the real answers to the physicist posters, of which I'm sure there are many.
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!
You would need to perform controlled tests under identical conditions to decide which is the more durable in reality. Please post the results on YouTube.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Gs will change through the flight
When it initially starts falling air resistance will be negligable and it will experiance approximately 0G
As it approaches terminal velocity and stops accelerating the G-force experianced will increase tending back towards 1G
When it hits the ground things get complex
After it has settled on the ground it will experiance 1G
During hitting the ground is where things get really complex. A simple model assuming that the objects are rigid and that "contact forces" appear instantlygives a result of infinite acceleration and therefore infinite Gs. In reality different parts of the object will experiance different Gs as the object deforms on impact.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"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"
What, the brush was moving too? It (actively) hit the iPhone 4? That's one Fandroid bush!
Well, if there's a landing strip where the bush has been cleared, aim for that.
If it's wide open space instead, give thanks for your good fortune and aim for the open space where the bush used to be.
Only if you assume a spherical iPhone.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Once it reaches terminal velocity, it would be at 1G again. Then it would hit the ground.
Terminal velocity is calculated as sqrt((2*w)/(rho*A*Cd)). .07 ft**2 .75
w = weight
rho = about 1.22 kgm**3
A = Things fall in the orientation that causes the most air resistance (believe it or not) so that's the face area, about
Cd = Coefficient of drag for a rectangle is about
So terminal velocity is about 50 MPH.
Doesn't it depend on if it's a 3G iPhone?