Apple's New Patent Covers Futuristic iPhone Protection System that Could Shift iPhones in Midair

RaduTyrsina · Dec 2, 2014

When it comes to patents, Apple is one of the companies that has dozens of them. But the problem is that most don't ever make their way into real products. Perhaps this could be the case with this new innovation that seems to be a little too futuristic.

Apple was awarded a patent covering a futuristic iPhone protection system that can recognize when the device is dropped, thus calculating an estimated point of impact and shift its center of gravity to avoid striking sensitive components. Here are some more details:

As described in the patent text, Apple's system relies on sensors to monitor physical device activity and positioning. Accepted embodiments leverage onboard accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS which are already incorporated in the latest iPhone and iPad models, while more advanced designs call for ultrasonic sensors, among others.

Feeding the data generated by the positioning sensors to a central processing unit enables quick and accurate device positioning determination, specifically as it applies to a state of freefall. When such a scenario is detected, sensors and processor work together to measure speed of descent, time to impact, orientation and other metrics. The processor may then conduct a statistical analysis of the fall by comparing gathered data against embedded information stored in device memory.

Sure, this invention would be awesome and could help plenty of million iPhone owners all over the world. So let's keep our fingers crossed and hope this won't be just another dusted patent filing.

Source: Apple Insider