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Apple Patents Technology To Stop Your iPhone 6s/7 Smashing
Apple has been awarded a new patent to help iPhones land on their feet and protect sensitive components
Apple products aren’t well known for their robust designs – if you drop an iPhone from a height there is quite a good chance you’ll pick it up to discover a smashed display. Apple knows its products are fragile and has been doing everything it can to try and protect the iPhone in your pocket.
Apple has now been awarded a new patent for technology that would soon protect your iPhone if you drop it. The technology can identify when the iPhone is falling, calculate the estimated point of impact and then shift its centre of gravity to make sure it doesn’t strike anything sensitive inside the phone.
If it ever makes its way into your iPhone, it’ll likely mean the handset will identify when it is falling and will shift itself to protect the display, camera and other vital yet fragile areas of the phone from getting damaged.
Inside it’ll employ a motor with eccentric mass on the falling phones rotational axis. This will mean the phone will be able to land on either its side or on its back before it impacts on the floor. The patent was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is described as a “protective mechanism for an electronic device”.
Apple Insider revealed the news and believes the technology could easily be employed in an upcoming iPhone. It said, “while Apple’s most recent iPhone 6 and 6 Plus incorporate bespoke linear oscillating motors that do not use an eccentrically connected rotational mass, previous models did, meaning the patent could easily be worked in to an upcoming variant.”
Could that mean we’ll see the technology employed in either the iPhone 6s or the iPhone 7? Potentially; but it also seems to be in the really early stages so it may be quite a long time until the technology makes its way to market.
Rumours of the next iPhone have already begun – here’s everything we know about the iPhone 6s so far.
James Peckham
15:37, 2 Dec 2014