My guess is, given state of the charging connector still attached but ripped off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914210):

The entire thing fell out of plane (phone + charging cable plugged), then landed in a tree, where the charging cable got tangled in branches and that's when phone broke out of it and fell in grass.

So phone was able to release kinetic energy in 2 big events (+a few branches hit maybe), not a direct splash on the ground.

Wonder if somehow they can analyze the accelerometer data of the phone and figure out if that correlates with that scenario.

In skydiving, it isn't unheard of for someone to have their phone fall out of their pocket and survive impact without the screen shattering. That's from ~13000ft, but once the phone reaches terminal velocity, it's all the same impact force regardless of altitude.

I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.

I'm surprised it didn't break past the strain relief. Everyone with an iPhone has a handful of charging cables that end up like [1]. That's where they tend to fail first.

1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...

I’ve never had a cable break like that. Many people just don’t know how to handle cables and treat them like rope without any knowledge of bend radius, internal wire twists, etc. (and don’t care if they crush them).

A small piece of shrink tube fixes this. The difficult part is to squeeze it onto the connector

The amount of force created when something hits the ground at terminal velocity depends on its mass, which varies with the cube of its size (with additional effects because it's not a cube or sphere). The amount of cross-sectional area over which this force is exerted varies with the square of its size. So when a small object hits the ground, that's a lot less force per cross sectional area than when a large object hits the ground. You'd expect the iPhone to take proportionately less damage than a person even not considering that it also has a smaller terminal velocity.

This will be cited by Boeing as proof that the failure of their aircraft wasn't that bad.

The charging cable was attached and ripped out with the phone, so it probably functioned as a tail, reducing the velocity a bit. Still, it wouldn’t be much. Impressive survivability by the phone.

Probably close to the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.

What remained of the charging cable was not much of a cable — it was barely the connector that remained.

https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744247194448961725#m

Ahh, clearly I was wrong then. Truly impressive.

Wow, if that's USB-C and it still charges, I'm going to stop worrying about reduced drop stability (while plugged in) compared to Lightning iPhones.

I was in Costa Rica taking an aerial tramway which was about 75 ft up over dirt/rocky hill and my Pixel 6a (with just a basic back case) fell out of my pocket, hit the metal floor and fell out the doorway. The very kind tour people actually went and found it and returned it with not even a scratch on it. Not exactly 16,000 ft, but I was still amazed and felt very lucky. The only damage was my wife being right that I should have put a strap on it.

This isn't much more than the original twitter post: https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685

The most astonishing thing to me is the destroyed charger cable.

Also a good reminder that it's a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it's long.

People in another spot were complaining that the auto lock maximum is apparently 5 minutes. It seems odd that this number isn't customizable.

Seems odd overall, yeah. But this is Apple we're talking about, they generally don't offer customisation. And when they do, they usually just offer a few options instead of freeform.

How you can't just disable the camera on the lock screen without disabling the entire camera app (and no way to disable the flashlight functionality, as far as I have been able to tell) is beyond me. It's not even about customization, these are things people can do without your lock code! Imagine going to show someone a recent photo and something you didn't take pops up instead.

In general I agree with you, but

> Imagine going to show someone a recent photo and something you didn't take pops up instead.

this is not true. The camera app opened from the lock screen just shows recent pictures taken with the camera opened from the lock screen. So if you lock the phone, then start the camera from the lock screen, there is no existing photos there.

You're describing a different scenario. I'm talking about someone grabbing a locked phone left on a table, taking an unwanted picture (say of their genitals, just to make it problematic), and then you find out when you go to show someone your recents.

One should not be able to modify the contents of a locked device but you can add photos on an iPhone. The recourse is to disable the Camera app via Screen Time and use a 3rd party camera app for when your phone is unlocked and you actually want to take photos. Unfortunately the flashlight functionality doesn't have such a workaround, but that one is more just a minor battery annoyance.

> You're describing a different scenario. I'm talking about someone grabbing a locked phone left on a table, taking an unwanted picture (say of their genitals, just to make it problematic), and then you find out when you go to show someone your recents.

Oh, yeah, you're right, I definitely didn't read it that way.

Also, I can't really say I've ever had that specific problem, but I guess it makes sense for some people to want to protect themselves from that.

> Also a good reminder that it's a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it's long.

It's wild to me especially with how important the device itself and email the device has access to can be that someone in 2024 did not have a screen lock enabled.

Crazy considering multiple iPhones (latest being an iPhone 11) haven't survived a few feet fall for me (no case...I'm extremely particular about using a case now).

I've never owned an iPhone (never will either) but I'm in the opposite boat these days. Cases degrade my phone experience and result in more waste to throw away. These phones are seemingly built like tanks now. I'd be hard pressed to break the screen on this one. It's survived falls on concrete no problem. Generally I don't let it fall because it's too expensive to aimlessly drop.

iPhones they brilliantly decided to make a rounded glass edge the first contact point for a lot of falls. All it takes is a few feet.

I had a spectacular break once. Sat my phone on my recumbent trike seat when I stood up, to take off my jacket. Went to pick up my trike, put it in the back of my truck and the phone spun off. About four feet off the ground.

Hit the cement spinning, which spiderweb cracked one corner. Not content with that, it bounced, now spinning in the opposite direction from the impact, hit on the other corner, spiderweb crack.

Now the bottom third of my phone was shattered glass with shards sticking out. And I had to call my team, learn their eta. One a week-long five hundred mile cycling tour.

Sucked.

The photos showed the phone had a cover/case — so maybe that’s very important? (contra Apple’s marketing)

Add in factors of hitting soft ground (grass/brush) and having enough height to rotate into a flat profile instead of hitting a corner.

Now I kinda wanna read about an experiment where someone drops a few hundred phones and compares various models

Must be a U-shaped curve of survival rate versus drop height.

Realistically it's more of a rounded L shape. Once you reach terminal velocity, you're not getting any more energy.

Then all you need is to get really lucky and/or hit something relatively soft, like grass on some less-dense ground.

It's well established that intermediate fall heights are the most dangerous, since the phone doesn't have enough time to rotate into the optimal landing position and brace for landing. Or was that for cats?

It takes the phone some time to switch into airplane mode and deploy the landing gear.

Also, how it lands (corner-first or not) and what it lands on (concrete or tile vs. dirt with ground cover) makes a huge difference.

I broke iPhone 4, 5, 5s and 1 st. Gen. SE. All of them are quite small, and all also the 4th are light as well. I use cases, but those light ones, so they don’t add weight and add some protection. Mostly from scratches. In my case, all of them fell from some surface onto the floor. Usually it’s a metre distance. I think I never dropped a phone from my ear height, so not even 2 m.

It probably survived because it hit soft ground and not like granite or asphalt.

There are also trees behind the spot so it could have landed on them and then ended on the ground.

Terminal velocity of an iphone should be around 110mph according to this https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6813341/T...

And surely it doesn't need that height to achieve it. So at some point the height stops mattering.

Good PR for Apple, less so for Boeing.

FTA: “one revelation seemed to defy the laws of physics: one of the mobile phones that had been sucked out of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 9 jet’s cabin remained in functioning condition after a 16,000-foot tumble.”

I don’t know what the full paywalled article says, so they may say the same, but I don’t think that is very surprising.

The terminal velocity of a tumbling iPhone won’t be high (about 70km/hour, according to https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falli...). It reaches that speed in a few seconds.

If, then, it drops on something that’s a bit forgiving, the deceleration won’t be excessive, and could easily be lower than that of dropping it on a hard concrete floor from a few meters high.

It's almost as if the laws of physics align entirely with the observed result! Baffling!

If the iPhone self-stabilized an acceleration maneuver while using its charging port speakers to build acceleration while playing Metallica, maybe it could reach the sound barrier and truly self-destruct.

So you want to say that phone doesn’t accelerate to infinite speed and doesn’t pulverize itself (or Earth) on impact? WOW!

I wonder if a smart phone would actually behave differently due to its shape. As kids we loved to throw little paper rectangles because they fall by spinning around the long axis (try it!). Smartphones being rectangles, I could see it auto-rotate like this and slow down further.

When did Mr. Bates, the X poster, find the phone? The time shows 2:21 and the picture was taken during daylight. Is that 2:21AM or 2:21PM? If in 12hr mode I'd expect the later.

In 24h mode it would show as 02:21.

Once it reaches its maximum velocity the altitude doesnt really matter. However I dont know how to calculate that maximum velocity and the minimum required altitute.

From the very short snippet I can read (paywall) I dont know if the phone landed in concrete or not.

“It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush and it didn’t have a screenlock on it,” from the article. No information how big the bush was but it cushioned the landing.

After its initial acceleration, the phone probably decelerated as its altitude decreased. The air density at 5 Km is about 0.6 of that at sea level. As drag is proportional to the air density and the square of the velocity, I think that implies the phone would reach the ground at a speed ~3/4 of its peak velocity (putting aside the admittedly significant issue of its orientation and rotation throughout the fall.)

Drag (air friction) is proportional to the square of velocity. If you know aerodynamic properties of iphone, you could find a value of velocity where drag is equal to gravitational force, at which point the speed doesn't change. You could use it as an approximation of the speed at which iphone hits the ground.

What about the heat? If the fall is longer won't the phone heat up more?

Nope, at the altitude planes are at, the atmosphere is much much colder than at ground level. Along with that the terminal velocity of the phone is going to be under the speed of sound so there won't really be any meaningful compression going on to heat up the air around it like you get with a descent from space. That heating essentially happens (this is simplified) because a space craft is going much faster than it's terminal velocity at the given altitudes it's passing through so it compresses the air below it, heating it just like you'd expect from the ideal gas law. It happens to be that it heats it so much that it makes a super-heated plasma so you end up with what looks like fire (not sure if there's actual combustion happening, but i wouldn't be shocked) surrounding the craft. That's also why once it's slowed down by the friction and air resistance, the plasma dissipates and is no longer a problem for re-entry.

Now if we were to launch the phone at several times the speed of sound we could probably get the same thing to happen but I'm doubtful that a phone could survive the acceleration in the first place.

It would actually get quite cold, at 16000' you can expect the air to be well below 0 (pick your units, it's fuckin cold).

The only time heating becomes an issue is at supersonic velocities and is due more to compression of the atmosphere against the object then actual friction.

> pick your units

Kelvin

In all seriousness, it can be down to -70 degrees Celsius.

And yet the air rushing past provides cooling....

Maybe you're thinking about an iPhone de-orbiting from ISS. That would be a different story.

At the terminal velocity of an iPhone, the air passing through will do more to cool it than to heat it up due to friction.

Hero protective case!

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38907620.