Posted on 01/10/2024 2:33:36 AM PST by Red Badger
One of the most staggering things to come out of the mid-flight incident in which the door of an Alaskan Airlines flight ripped off moments after take-off is that one passenger’s iPhone was allegedly found under a bush in working condition after plummeting 16,000 feet.
This is wild because other iPhones have been unable to survive getting knocked off the table.
According to CBS News, a man named Sean Bates stumbled across a phone sitting under a bush in Washington. He said that the phone was in airplane mode and was displaying a baggage receipt for Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. That’s the same flight that had that whole issue with the door flying off.
Bates also said that when he called the NTSB to report the phone, an NTSB representative named Zoe told him that this was the second phone from the flight that had been called in.
Now, this would be a weird thing to make up, but people make up all kinds of weird things in a bid to go viral.
An iPhone that has cracked in half. Who knows how it happened but it probably just fell off of a kitchen counter. (Getty Images) Notoriously Fragile iPhones Couldn’t Survive That… Could It? What surprised me is that I never considered iPhones to be particularly robust. I’ve had several but I haven’t broken one. However, I did have an iPod Touch take a fatal dip in the toilet on January 2, 2012. The only reason I can remember that is because it happened on the same day the Flyers lost to the Rangers in the Winter Classic. That day sucked.
The reason I’ve got an otherwise perfect record of unbroken iPhones is that I treat them with immense care. I act like I’m carrying a Faberge egg in my pocket.
I’ve known people who have had to spend hours at the T-Mobile store because their phone fell off a counter. I’ve known some bumped into something with it in their pocket and it ended catastrophically. My own brother broke a phone by forgetting it was in his pocket and wading into the ocean.
This is to say that when I think of the iPhone, the word “rugged” doesn’t pop into my head.
That was why I got suspicious when I heard about this phone that plummeted several miles and came out unscathed.
But it turns out it might be a little more believable than I thought,
That Phone May Not Have Been Going As Fast As You Think
However, according to Duncan Watts, from the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, that 16,000-foot free-fall may not have had the phone in question moving as fast as you might think.
Watts told The Washington Post that an iPhone’s terminal velocity — its maximum speed before it stops accelerating while freefalling — is only about 30 miles per hour under normal conditions.
“The larger the iPhone, the lower the terminal velocity,” Watts explained. “The maximum is around 100 mph, but that would only happen if the phone’s screen was perpendicular to the ground.”
Of course, you’d have to assume that a phone that was sucked out of a fuselage at 16,000 wasn’t dropping straight down, perpendicular to the ground.
Hitting the ground at 30mph is still a hefty wack for something made mostly of glass. However, if it’s got a decent case and hits the ground right, it seems like it could survive.
Now, who knows if Bates is telling the truth or pulling a stunt. All we know is that a phone making it through a fall like that might be more plausible than we think.
The case looks like an Otter Box.
The Otter Box on my iPhone has saved me many times.
This is very true I dropped my iPhone off one of those tall orange ladders in Home Depot it landed flat and to my absolute amazement there was no damage!! Months later I again dropped my phone from the top of the Orange ladder it landed on the corner and BOTH sides of the phone had huge cracks in the glass but it still worked!!
“Or maybe it hit soft ground.”
Up here in the PNW we’ve had more drizzle than normal and warm temps over an extended time and the ground there should have been on the soft/spongy side.
Would not matter, I cannot use Apple stuff, because...
“even as I was logged on to find the perfect protective case for it, I got off the toilet, and it slid out of the breast pocket of my shirt landed on the floor, only 3 feet away, and cracked the stupid face.”
This sounds like a you problem, not an iPhone problem. Buy a case at the store, or don’t use it until you get your case. Or take your chances. Frankly, Apple replaces these phones swiftly, just walk into the Apple Store and pay the price for cracked screen with AppleCare.. which is included for 1 year.. and learn your lesson.
Frankly, I buy my case before buying the phone so I have it that first moment and get a good deal too.
With the new phones.. the iPhone Pro Max ones.. I have taken to screen and camera protectors which are getting quite good. The systems for applying them really do a good job of preventing bubbles and dust bumps if you shop for this. And, they are cheap, less than $10 on amazon. This is to protect the screen from scratches that devalue the phone on trade in day.. or when you decide to sell to upgrade. The camera cover protects the lenses. The new designs exclude stuff accumulating around them from your pocket.
Anyway, you know when you are going to buy a phone. Plan a bit and avoid the problem entirely.
Still this is fun or painful depending on how you look at it.
iPhone 15 Pro DROP TEST! Is Titanium STRONGER?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qOLjKzc-kQ
Be gentle with Apples new Titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max ... Yikes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS0SItAzEXg&t=3s
And for Total Cringe.. watch this.. that comes right after the above..
How much ‘Titanium’ does iPhone 15 Pro *actually* have? - NO SECRETS HERE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_W73ouKtjU
You misread my post. Nowhere in my post that I blame the phone, not even once.
I post was in no way a complaint about the durability of a product. It was a complaint about the inevitable timing of bad fortune when one gambles.
That and the difference between landing on some concrete sidewalk, road or parking lot and grass or similar. It really didn’t matter whether it was 16K feet or 1000 ft. It reached some terminal velocity due to wind resistance very quickly.
It is easy to misread.
Did you watch the vids.. oy.. total cringe.. freaked me out watching them again before I posted.. especially that last one where he tears the phone to shreds.
It took me almost 3 months to recommend the 15 Pro Max because it is more fragile than the 14 Pro Max. But, it is such a nice phone that it overcomes that issue.. just don’t flex it between your fingers.. it will crack.
You probably couldn’t tell from my post, but I was most aggrieved with the damage to my phone because of my OWN stupidity, not the phone itself.
There is that old story about the Scorpion and the Frog is foremost in my mind. When the Frog was stung by the Scorpion and is baffled by what it had done by killing him (and the Scorpion replied saying You knew what I was, and stinging Frogs is what I do, it is in my nature)
There is a parallel for me: I knew it was in the nature of these phones to break if they land right on a corner in a short fall to a hard surface. Yet like the Frog in the story, I thought I could ferry it across the waters of buying a case for it, because it was only a day or two I would be without a good case, and I could manage the risk.
Accepting, of course, that an iPhone breaking on a short fall to a hard surface is what it would do. Except that I didn’t manage that risk correctly.
When I have a phone in a good case, it has friction, so...standing up from a toilet, bending over to pick up a piece of trash, for the prior five years, I didn’t have any worry about the slick phone sliding out, because the case kept it from easily doing so. Heck, the case created enough friction that pulling it out of my pocket was sometimes a challenge.
So, when I bent over as I stood up, the muscle memory of the prior five years kicked in, and I didn’t protect that phone which slid out as if it had a coating of silicone spray on it, and hit the floor at just the right angle.
I couldn’t believe it. And it was all on me.
I did this once, but the phone wasn’t even mine.. a client’s phone.. I wanted to weep. Same feelings.. How could I have done that! I knew better.
But this is where AppleCare comes in.. they replaced the phone for a pittance.. done.
LOL, I have been using Macs since 1986, and after a while I realized AppleCare wasn’t worth it for me. I think last time I got AppleCare must have been back in the mid-nineties.
Funny...I had a Mac 9500, and the motherboard went bad a about a month after my AppleCare expired. It was $1500 for a new one if I recall correctly, and I just kept after them, writing letters to Apple, etc. Eventually, they grudgingly got me a new motherboard. Probably refurbished, I bet. Anyway.
After that, I never got AppleCare again.
But it sure would have helped this time, though.
If it was one of the old “candy bar” phones I would absolutely believe it. I was walking on ceiling joists and mine fell out of my shirt pocket and splattered on the concrete below.
I put it back together and it worked like nothing had ever happened to it.
My waterproof Iphone fries inside it’s waterproof case after getting dunked.
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