Apple Patents Cat-Inspired Method To Reduce Dropped iPhone Damage

Sometimes your phone can take a really hard drop and walk away relatively unscathed. Sometimes a short fall could result in your phone’s screen cracking, which goes to show how your phone is dropped will affect the kind of damage it would suffer. Obviously dropping it on its edges or on its screen will be the worst, but what can we do? Accidents happen from time to time.

However it seems that Apple is aware of that and while it would be unrealistic to create a phone that is completely damage-proof, they have come up with a way that could hopefully reduce the damage, and it sounds like this method has been inspired by nature, or to be more exact, a cat and the way that they seem to be able to reorient themselves mid-air so as to land on their legs.

According to the patent, “As mobile electronic devices impact a surface after freefall they may be substantially damaged, even if they are encased within a cover or other protective device. Smart phones with cover glass may be particularly vulnerable when the cover glass impacts the ground. They may be much less vulnerable if a metal or plastic portion of the housing of the smart phone impacts the ground first or instead.”

To prevent that, it suggests that inside the phone there exists some kind of sliding or spinning mass that will be able to change the orientation of the phone while it is falling. The patent also describes a slightly more outlandish method of blasting out gas through external nozzles to change the phone’s orientation, like a spaceship. That being said, this is only a patent so there’s no way of knowing if Apple will make it a reality, but thrusters built into an iPhone? Sign us up!

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: iPhone, Patent