Apple has received a patent for a mechanism designed to protect iPhones during a fall. This protection mechanism involves a system that recognizes when the device is dropped, according to Apple Insider, and can shift the device's center of gravity to change the angle of impact and thus protect the phone's sensitive components when it hits the ground.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded U.S. Patent No. 8,903,519 to Apple for a "protective mechanism" which is "in communication with the processor and is configured to selectively alter a center of mass of the electronic device."
Apple's invention claims to use a motion sensor and a processor that "detects when the electronic device is in freefall based on information from the motion sensor." It also includes "a mass that functions in a first capacity during the freefall and a second capacity during an alert, wherein the processor alters the center of mass of the electronic device by moving the mass in the protective mechanism in response to detecting the freefall of the electronic device," according to the patent text.
Basically, what this protective mechanism does is sense when the iPhone is dropped, calculate which part of the phone will hit the ground first, and then shift the phone to the best angle possible that minimizes the damage.
Darrell Etherington of Tech Crunch writes, "It's still not super likely we'll see these incorporated into new devices, as the tech described is a variation of the vibration motors contained in models that launched before the iPhone 6." He does, however, agree that this invention does have "realistic goals" and can use already-existing technology.
Making this protective system work would also require technology that is still not present in existing phones, which is necessary to "determine the phone's trajectory, spin and angle of descent in real-time, in order to tell the vibration motor how to spin correctly to shift the phone's center of gravity," he says.
"In some ways, it's quite literally rocket science, and seems like a huge allocation of resources to put into making phone falls slightly less destructive."