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iPhone 4 Survives Fall From Skydiver's Pocket
tripleevenfall sent in a link with a story that is sure to be the basis for the next iPhone 4 commercial. From the article: "Jarrod McKinney's iPhone 4 — a notoriously fragile device — cracked when his 2-year-old knocked it off a bathroom shelf. So it's easy to see why McKinney, a 37-year-old in Minnesota, would be 'just absolutely shocked' when that same phone survived a fall from his pocket — while he was skydiving from 13,500 feet."
I've heard of dropped calls, but this is ridiculous.
Doesn't it highly depend on the surface it lands on as well?
I mean, a bathroom floor is pretty hard and solid, while, say, a bush could soften the blow quite significantly.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Even though it may still make calls, as claimed in the article, I wouldn't go so far as to say it "survived..." Nobody would continue to use a phone in this condition..
"Sponsored by Apple" is missing at the end of the article.
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
Didn't we have a similar story not too long ago?
Anyway, I think the consensus at the time was that there's a difference between falling on a rock hard bathroom floor versus a bush or even grassland.
It can survive a fall from 13k feet, but not a two-year-old. And all the parents say, "Par for the course."
Slashdot? Anti-Apple? I'd say the Apple fan demographics outnumbers the non-Apple fan one here. :(
And in case you are thinking 'Of course it's bl***y cracked, it fell from thousands of feet' I would point you to the TFA where he notes it had a cracked screen -before- the accident, which just made it worse.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
I'm no physicist but wouldn't something small like an iphone hit terminal velocity very quickly?
This phone may still be able to make calls but would anybody in his/her right mind say the phone "survived" the fall? Look at it. Also, one snippet from the linked article: That's especially amazing since the iPhone 4 can suffer from cell reception issues. When the Apple smartphone debuted in 2010, a saga the tech media called Antennagate followed. Consumer watchdogs claimed a design flaw on the phone's antenna caused it to drop calls unexpectedly. Apple gave out free phone cases to address the issue. Whoever wrote this garbage did not know what he was writing about. Why is this on slashdot again?
I don't think I know a single person that would qualify that as "surviving" the fall. The phone is destroyed beyond any reasonable use.
Of course, one can expect a fair amount of denial in such cases; after all, the loss of an Apple product is often a very emotionally tumultuous time for Apple fanboys. I hear they even have support groups now.
should absent from this sport as he endangers other living beings!
I use to work for a skydiving company, we've had a few Nokia's survive these sorts of incidents even if we only found half of them, they all rang when we called them, the one's we did find we're usually just scratched or had plastic from the corner of the case has come off. You hear these stories all the time with many various small devices, so this is either a fanboi article about how good the iPhone is or it's a flamebait article about how amazing that an Apple product actually survived a fall for once, either way no one cares.
My daughter's iPhone 4 fell out of her back pocket when she was riding a Harley. She didn't realize it until she reached her destination; then her husband took off to look for it. He found it laying in a busy road, with tire marks on it.
It was fine.
"a notoriously fragile device" is anti-fanboy hyperbole.
1. The glass was completely shattered, the only reason they say it "survived" was that it could still receive a phone call, and he could only make a call by using the bluetooth connection in his truck (also the GPS worked which is how they found the phone).
2. The phone had a protective case (not pictured in the article), so you can't solely credit the device itself.
3. As he found the phone on top of a building within half a mile of his landing point, he was apparently skydiving in a populated area. He's lucky the article title isn't "Innocent bystander doesn't survive iPhone 4 fall from skydiver's pocket".
He found the gadget [...] on top of a building about a half-mile away from where he landed with his parachute.
This, from TFA seems much more newsworthy.
By the way, the tag 'yeahright' is missing.
Drop it from 100 km I don't think it matters after a while. Is there an app for aerodynamic heating protection?
wow, once i dropped my gameboy.
This is a real article, for sure, it's not like slashdot is falling for some dumb shit viral marketing about how tough iPhones are.
it was while he was sitting in the plane.
This sort of thing happens fairly often, actually.
There's a video on Youtube of a helmet cam getting knocked off at the door:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKN-pNQW-Pk
The guy picking it up was priceless funny to me.
I have a 7 digit ID and I'm getting tired of these things. Poor 6 digit guys! Are we really getting short of worthy news?
La culpa no es del chancho...
the iPhone is fairly solid state, Not to many buttons the only real moving part is the vibrate.All the parts are packaged quite tightly. So yes it can survive a fall from a skydivers pocket. The droids may too... However many of them are using molded and glued/snapped in plastic cases, which could break a lot easier spreading parts around. The iPhone is mostly steel and glass so for most cases the glass will break but the parts should still work...
as an iPhone owner it is a no big deal. There are higher end droids that can survive the fall too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd be happier if it could survive a ~5ft fall without cracking - I don't think many people plan on skydiving with a phone.
I also don't see how it 'survived' - it exists, yes, but I doubt it will function to an appropriate level of being able to phone/do anything useful whatsoever.
I am calling bullshit on this one, CNN selling out to apple as usual
People have survived falls from skydives when their chutes or backup chutes didnt open. That doesnt mean every person that jumps out of a plane can live from a free fall with no parachute.
A mere 3 feet off the floor does it for me.
You pack things like your telephone in the lockers before you go up. As far as I'm concerned, he should be hit with the same penalties as a drunk driver for endangering lives.
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To complete the slashvertisement paradigm.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
So how would this article have ended if that phone drifted into a populated area and hit someone in the head?
I think it's criminally irresponsible not to have that phone tethered to him when skydiving.
"You're holding it wrong!"
No it didn't. It was useless. Also, OLD NEWS IS OLD.
Maybe in Appleland this counts as "surviving a fall", but in the Panasonic Toughbook neighborhood this phone is deceased or at least pining for the fjords. Maybe some people would like to carry around a pile of broken glass in their pocket; I'll pass.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
My ancient motorola flip-phone has survived several bicycle crashes, being thrown through an interior wall, plenty of rain and sweat, and I once lost it in a mall parking lot in the winter where it got buried in snow for a week, then later found by someone and turned in to the local cops, where it and I were eventually reunited. Still works great.
It's not like every iPhone 4 is going to survive a fall from 13500 feet. Posts like this should be banned on /.
Down a staircase from top to bottom in a pub that went to the toilets. It was a tiled staircase. The back cover came off, popped it back on and not a scratch on the phone. I also dropped it one night in a pub and sent it a web text the next day saying if found return to my address and later that day someone popped by with it apologizing saying they don't know how they ended up with it.
Time to break out the ballistics gel!
The phone "survived", if by "survived", you mean "broke". Just like Macs are "cheap" and "powerful" and "a good value", and Linux is "easy to use", and Windows Me was "stable enough for release".
My commanding officer's iPhone4 accidentally fell down the loaded barrel of an M1-Abrams Tank. He didn't find it until AFTER it was fired from the barrel -- It smashed through a brick wall, decapitated 42 terrorists, then ricocheted off of a Nexus-S and a Kin (destroying them both). We found it embedded in a granite counter-top with bits of skull and a congressional medal of honor on it.
It was fine.
Doesnt sounds like a professional jumper to me. Dude coulda killed someone on the ground!
www.web-anon-tools.us.tc
iPhone is still cheap crap compared to electronics of yesteryear. I have an HP Deskjet 500 that still works today and it was dropped down several flights of dorm stairs by a friend helping me move in, down basement steps, fallen out of a moving car (don't ask), and had beer and other things spilled on it multiple times. It refuses to die. Other old HP and IBM gear from the 80s I have is the same. Now I can't get a printer from HP that lasts for more than a few months before either becoming too expensive due to the ink or just starts sucking or doing weird stuff.
I've already had 3 iPhones die on me for the stupidest reasons, no of which were my fault, but Apple finds ways of not agreeing to the warranty. For example, everyone in the beach town I live in has had problems with iPhones not charging because there is "moisture" in the air and this has caused the charge port to oxidize. There's a fucking ocean, duh. Apple has decided though we must be swimming with our phones.
Fake; also trendy hipster skydivers might want to consider leaving their iphones at home before they kill someone.
Most non-touchscreen phones would have survived with their screens intact.
Fuckign slashvertisement. Goddamned shame on you samzenpus. Time for the retirement home, you've lost your mental faculties.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The phone still worked - they found it using "Find my iPhone" which requires it be on and operational, also when they called it rang... it's just that the touchscreen was broken..
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My first question is how did they know where to look? Having jumped out of a few planes myself, I for one can say it'd be just as lucky for someone to find an object that small as it would be for the phone to survive its impact.
Now if the guy was "Under Canopy" when it dropped he'd have a better idea where to look. But while it happens often enough most divers don't "Hop and Pop" at 13.5... They like freefall for as long as possible, opening between 1 & 2000 feet.
My point is I don't believe the phone fell from 13.5, its VERY unlikely he'd have seen where it fell from that height. Tracking apps aside.
Never the less, good on Apple for making one phone, of the millions out there, that "survived" a fall. The fanboys can rejoice in the fact that they have yet another one up on everyone else. Because obviously no one else has ever dropped a different phone from a plane and had it "Survive". I'm neither suprised by this appearing in todays media, nor am I suprised an electronic device survived a fall, when humans have done the same. Big deal...
Except it wasn't an iPhone but my kitchen phone, and it didn't fall out of my pocket while sky diving but off the wall while diving for ice cream in the freezer.
Oh, there's a difference: At no point could my stupidity have killed anyone else.
(And, yes the phone did survive the fall.)
I'm still more impressed by the phone that stopped a bullet.
Have gnu, will travel.
He could make calls using a bluetooth headset. Although not fully operational, it did still work as a phone.
That is not dead, it is crippled...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I assume it he also used free-range airplane and fair trade parachute. #Hipster
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the iPhone 4 as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the iPhone 4 had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field than we know today.
My friend's iPhone 3GS dropped onto a sidewalk. The front screen shattered, but the phone was fully functional.. for two days. Then it stopped working. I'd like to see how long this guy's lasts.
We have a short memory on /. - this happened a few months ago with another aviation mishap when Ron Walker dropped his iPhone from 1000'
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/03/24/1145245/IPhone-4-Survives-1000-Foot-Fall-From-Plane
At 1,000' it has come close to terminal velocity, hasn't it? So, whether 1,000' or 13,500' it's just a matter of what kind of surface it lands on, and how the phone happens to land.
Ever since that original article though I've stopped worrying about dropping my phone - by chance I happened to choose that same Griffin "DiamondClear" case after I bought my iPhone and Apple was still giving them (the cases) away.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
There's a good selection of phones available which meet military ruggedness standards. Motorola's DEFY phone, which runs Android, is a full-face touch screen ruggedized phone. It has roughly the same form factor as an iPhone. It's also water-resistant. (If the inductive-charging people would get their act together and standardize, phones could be connectorless and sealed, which would be a win.)
That uses Corning "Gorilla Glass", which is reasonably rugged and scratch resistant. The next step up would be sapphire over polycarbonate. ("Will assist in reduction of vehicle weight without compromising ballistic performance")
Mine was run over and smashed to a pulp by a GMC Sierra 1500 and it still (kinda) worked. When I plugged it in it was recognized as an iPhone in recovery mode!
This signature is lame.
My 3GS slipped out of my pocket as I got in and out of my car to confirm it would fit in the space that I was backing into. After I ran it over (in a smart car), the touch screen looked like the one that fell from the skydiver's pocket. I hooked it up to iTunes and it sync'ed fine. I am an app developer and was able to hook it up to the dev tools and check out the console (not as many errors from the broken parts of the phone as I expected) and I still experiment with it. Unfortunately, the touch screen and digitizer unit cost about $90 and a new 3GS (with contract) was $49, so it wasn't worth repairing. But it was a great opportunity to open up a phone and see how it is put together. Even though the touch screen glass, being glass, is fragile, the rest of the phone seems pretty robust. But I imagine that other smart phones are just as robust.
All it takes is something soft.. I've known people to lose a cellphone out of a pocket on a motorbike at 150kph only to find it relatively unscathed in a patch of grass. However reading TFA and seeing the picture, that phone hardly "survived" even if it does make calls.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Well, with all that sharp glass you could use it to shave. See, it never dies only morphs into a new item you can still use.
Hell, I had a Nokia one piece phone back around 2001 that got ran over by a Ford F-350 which was towing a horse trailer with horses in it at the time. All the tires on one side of that rig ground this poor Nokia into the freshly spread white rock gravel. I know cause I had just finished building that entrance to the barn. I barely got finished before the new arrival for my sisters boarding facility arrived. I helped them unload the horse which probably stepped on the phone too for all I know. Then we got that mare settled into her stall and had a bottle of wine, or 3. Went home around midnight and wondered where my phone was. Backtracked back to the barn entrance and started calling the Nokia. Sure enough I heard my ring. Dug it out of the gravel and answered the call. Face plate was cracked and I fixed it by borrowing a body and a used screen. My buddy did phone repair and sales at the time and I could get parts cheap. So, to say it survived? No way. It did however answer and make calls.
The Iphone in this story is junk. It did not survive. Still functional somewhat but give it to a customer and say "here's your phone". See what they say.
I saw a guy txting while standing at the urinal. He was using both hands to txt. I didn't stand next to him to do my business, btw.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
How did you pull the battery before you dismantled it?
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
It's a lot easier with modern devices, but functioning electronics have been fired from guns at least since the proximity fuzes of WWII - and these used vacuum tubes!
My son dropped his 3GS from a roller coaster at Bush Gardens. Coaster specs read the drop spot was 205 feet from the pavement below. He did have a heavy duty Otter Silicone case. The fellow who retrieved the phone for him said it bounced 6 feet high.. NO DAMAGE. Works exactly fine..
iPhone 4 still receives calls after 13,500 ft drop! Yeah Apple! http://wp.me/p1yzb4-15z