The Boeing 737 MAX 9, operated in the U.S. by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, remains grounded following a panel coming off of an Alaska Airlines jet while inflight. Pilots made an emergency landing. Everyone on board was safe. Fortunately nobody was seated next to the panel when the cabin depressurized.
A kid had their shirt pulled out the missing piece of fuselage, while his mother held onto him. And two cell phones flew out of the plane.
One made worldwide news when it was recovered intact after dropping more than 16,000 feet out of the sky. It was found on the side of a road, in airplane mode, with details of the owner’s checked baggage up on the screen. It had been plugged in to charge, and was yanked off of the charger and out the side of the plane. There were “no scratches on it.”
Quick video I just posted to TikTok summarizing how I found that passenger's phone pic.twitter.com/saCoMyA9ra
— Seanathan Bates (@SeanSafyre) January 8, 2024
The question on everyone’s mind after this was: what was the amazing case that protected the iPhone?
MYSTERY SOLVED: IT WAS US ✈️@AlaskaAir @SeanSafyre
tl;dr: the iphone's case that survived a 16,000 feet drop from alaska airlines was the spigen cryo armor
(receipts below) https://t.co/YoAypHEGaK pic.twitter.com/zFcLWg3Kdu
— Spigen (@SpigenWorld) January 12, 2024
The phone had a Spigen Cryo Armor case on, as of this writing selling at Amazon for $24 (lists for $65 retail).
I have to think a lot had to do with the angle at which it made impact. Drop a phone the wrong way out of your pocket and the glass will shatter. The force at which the phone fell isn’t going to be materially different given the height. Nonetheless, this has to be the best cell phone case ad… ever.
On the Amazon website, it says frequently returned items. It also says it does not support mag safe, which is why it probably gets returned.
The phone landed on a natural cushion: a bush. The case had little, if anything, to do with the condition of the phone.
BTW, I use a Spigen case and love it. But there is no way my case saves my phone if it lands on concrete at terminal velocity.
Leonard, I think the magsafe version of Cryo Armor is “Mag Armor”
I’d add that being flat, a Cell phone’s terminal velocity is almost certain to be much lower than you’d think. These guys have multiple videos where they drop cell phones from helicopters and giant Dams, etc. The flat surface area creates a lot of drag and the phones tend to be working fine when they land. Here’s just one of the segments where they’ve dropped phones from something high:
Another amazing find was the hard drive from the 2003 shuttle crash. It fell to earth and almost all the data was recovered.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2535754/shuttle-columbia-s-hard-drive-data-recovered-from-crash-site.html
It looks like they made their CASE to the public.
At this sort of velocity it’s all about the landing, not the protection. A case would be good for preventing scratches but it’s only going to save your phone in edge cases (even a bit of cushioning reduces the peak force of an impact.) I also feel a case makes falls less likely in the first place–bare phones are on the slippery side. I also have a lanyard on mine–easy with a case, impossible without.
I do agree it’s a good ad, though–people won’t realize it’s the circumstances rather than the case.
Too bad it wasn’t filming. I’d love to see something like a 360° camera record that fall.
I always enjoyed falling to my death in Google Earth.
The amount of pop up ads today is much worse than usual using my phone. Just random thought. I do love your blog, Gary.
Have this Spigen case and many other Spigen cases for my phones. Can’t say they’ve held up any better than the more expensive OtterBox cases which I have on some of the phones too, but those beltclip holders with some of the OtterBox have weaker plastic nowadays than they used to have.
Given the phone cases I get and my record of not breaking phones with them, I don’t have much personal need for cell phone insurance from the bank card issuers.
“A kid had their shirt pulled out the missing piece of fuselage, while his mother held onto him.” I guess I’m not understanding the pronoun usage. “had their shirt” at the beginning of the sentence and then “mother held on to him.” Someone ‘splain” usage. Maybe “..its shirt pulled out” followed by “mother held on to it.” would have been more appropriate?
The phone could have bounced off the tree branches on it’s way to the ground. that would take away some of the velocity and possibly change the direction enough so the ground impact was significantly lessened.