Anybody who’s ever owned an iPhone has had this recurring nightmare where their ‘more-fragile-than-a-newborn’ handset slips from their hands and responds to the laws of gravity with breakneck velocity. A sickening ‘thud’ and a million heart attacks later, one of two things happen: the lucky ones will miraculously escape with nothing more than a scratch on the body. Unlucky mortals like me will stare at a screen that has a spider’s web for decoration and squint through the cracks in the coming weeks to guess whether I’m even dialling the right number.
Apple is looking to prevent future mishaps like this and protect its delicate devices from careless creatures, clumsy idiots, and people with butter fingers. They could always start by using sturdier materials, but noooo … Hung up as they are on technology and innovation, these guys have patented an intelligent dropping mechanism that could help devices like iPhone and iPad land on their feet … just like a cat!
That’s right. After carefully observing the crafty manoeuvres of the cunning cat, some genius has decided it would be a desirable trait to have in their iPhones (and possibly other devices as well). So Apple went ahead and filed Patent No. 20130257582, more easily remembered as ‘Protecting an electronic device’.
What it does is pretty simple. The phone, when it falls, realises that it’s falling. The data gathered from the GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope help it calculate how fast it’s falling and how far away the ground is. Upon receiving all this data, the ‘protective mechanism’ in the phone reorients the device in a way that it lands on the least vulnerable part of the phone, thereby preventing damages that would have left you with a burned wallet and chronic depression.
Here’s a scientific (read: complicated) diagram that explains this very simple concept:
For the more scientifically inclined readers in our community, here’s the entire patent for you to pour over in your free time.
Coming back to the ‘catphone’ (yeah, I just thought of that!), it sounds pretty good, if you ask me. An intelligent phone that has cat-like reflexes would be heaven sent for someone like me who’d find a way to drop her phone even if it was surgically attached to her body.
However, the patent also outlines a few techniques that border on ‘what the f**k did I just read’? The innovators seemed to have gotten carried away with some of the science fiction they read in comic books. For instance, there’s talk of releasing pressurised gas from under the phone to ‘soften its landing’. I can’t help but chortle on this. I know it’s extremely juvenile of me, but if this did become an actual feature, this would probably be the first case of gas saving a phone’s butt!
If that wasn’t laughable, there’s another suggestion of the phone using an electric ion propulsion system to … I don’t know, fly away when it gets dropped? Who were they inspired by this time? Iron Man?
Anyway, it’s great to know that cats have a bigger purpose to serve in our lives than starring in cute videos and hilarious internet memes. In the future, they might be credited with saving that iPhone of yours when you carelessly drop it and it plummets from 5 feet towards (almost certain) death and destruction. We just hope that part of the empirical evidence this patent is based on didn’t involve pushing cats strapped with iPhones out of the window.
Till the time such futuristic iPhone devices become a reality, may we suggest that Apple look towards building sturdier phones that don’t need a body armour for protection? And they needn’t look very far for inspiration. I remember with great fondness a Nokia handset that I had almost a decade and a half ago. It was impervious to drops, falls, bumps, knocks, earthquakes and the freaking holocaust.
It would be nice if the iPhone could also proudly make such a claim. Or just be able to make some coffee. Yeah, some coffee would be good. And a sandwich, please!