Interesting Apple Patent

[watercooled]

Ebuyer brought this to my attention: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-...s-back-1139511

Seems like a fairly interesting concept, move a few weights about in the phone to make it land on its back. Of course, it's only really useful if the back is made of a decent shock-absorbing material, and TBH they could probably manage something about as useful by having a tough case protrude past the screen to prevent it touching anything, much like a lot of phone cases do. But that might might harm the aesthetics of the phone, and we couldn't have that could we?

[jim]

I wonder how far you'd have to drop it for it to actually work - I mean, most phones are dropped from 2-3 feet I guess, and it'd have to change position in the air pretty rapidly to not hit the ground before it'd finished.

[stevie lee]

what happens if you drop it when the batteries flat?


and won't people be dropping the phones on purpose to see how many flips it does before landing? creating a whole new sport of phone gymnastics


what happens if you duct tape one to your cat then drop the cat? it might create a perpetual motion machine as your cat and phone jockey for position on what lands first. creating a whole new sport of phonecat gymnastics.

[Preacher]

Pretty pointless as its going to need some sort of mechanism to move the parts, even if its just sliding rails. The phones going to need to be bigger and heavier to accommodate it all

Why not just make the phone bottom heavy (when its laying flat), and let gravity take its toll.

[kompukare]

what happens if you drop it when the batteries flat?

Then you're not un-holding it correctly...

[watercooled]

what happens if you drop it when the batteries flat?


and won't people be dropping the phones on purpose to see how many flips it does before landing? creating a whole new sport of phone gymnastics


what happens if you duct tape one to your cat then drop the cat? it might create a perpetual motion machine as your cat and phone jockey for position on what lands first. creating a whole new sport of phonecat gymnastics.

It would make a worthy adversary to the back-to-back taped tortoises!

Yeah I get the problems about needing more components etc, and it is probably drastically over-complicating something which could easily be solved with better construction material selection, but it's interesting nonetheless.

[Dareos]

I think weebles may already have this patented

[newwikstromkare]

when become famous, there will be something than before

[Sarahbay]

in a futuristic world this is a nice idea but it sort of seems ridiculous no? I saw the patent pictures and I don't think this could actually work properly

[watercooled]

Yeah like I said it's an interesting concept, but probably not much more at the moment.

[Splash]

surely you just tape a piece of buttered toast to the back of your phone?

[watercooled]

You may be on to something!

[Scozo]

Oh my god this would be a life saver unfortunately it's a bit too late for my scuffed up S3! Bloody resin.

[aramil]

The response time would have to be lightning fast.

Must be easier to make the phone hover