Apple has been granted a patent today for a device that could be installed in future iPhones to stop them from landing on delicate areas when dropped.
Valve Is Taking On Twitch And Introducing Native Livestreaming Into Steam
Most people are familiar with that moment right after you feel a bagel or piece of toast accidentally leave your grip. With your limited reflexes, the only thing you can do is watch helplessly as your breakfast spins toward the floor and hope that it lands with the buttered side facing up. The same experience happens after an iPhone drop. All you can do is watch it plummet and hope that it doesn't land right on its screen or a corner, the places where a fall can cause some series trouble for your display. With Apple's newly patented device, however, this whole experience could be a lot less stressful.
The full text of the patent can be found here (thanks, AppleInsider). The basic idea is that an iPhone would sense when it is in freefall after it slips out of the hand of an unfortunate user, which it can already do thanks to the device's team of accelerometers and gyroscopes. This invention, however, would then selectively change the phone's center of mass, reorienting the phone mid-air in an attempt to make it land on a safer area like the sturdier back of its casing.
If the mechanism works as well in the real world as it does on paper, then Apple could start making a generation of smartphones that actively avoid landing on their screens, saving plenty of users from the headache of a cracked display.
