Imagine if your iPhone knew better than to fall on its screen after accidentally being dropped? A newly discovered Apple patent suggests the company is working on technology that rotates your iPhone in mid-air.
Titled “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device,” the filing described technology that could protect an iPhone from hitting the ground face down by using a rotational mechanism to change its orientation. The patent detailed a few ways Apple could construct an iPhone with this feature, including the use of an internal component that shifts mass to one end of the phone to change its direction. This would enable the device’s most impact-resistant surface to take the fall, potentially preventing cracked screens and reducing overall damage.
Another section of the patent describes an on-device black box that could monitor and store information about the impact of the fall. Ideally, this tech would be used to tell users exactly how badly their iPhone is damaged after a fall.
There’s no telling when or if these devices would hit the market, but this could be Apple’s answer to Samsung’s flexible, virtually unbreakable OLED smartphone that has yet to be released.
