iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail

https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685

by wannacboatmovie • 3 years ago

546 448 3 years ago

twitter.com

aurareturn• 3 years ago

A lot of things went into my head:

* The iPhone owner didn't put a password/passcode?

* Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?

* Now we know an iPhone will survive falling from the sky

wannacboatmovie2• 3 years ago

Disabling auto-lock is definitely a thing, as anyone that's ever tried to use an iPhone in a car for navigation knows.

It's very possible the phone has a passcode but was sucked out while someone was using it, and never put to sleep.

Also worth noting the owner had a screen protector, so that may have quashed that everlasting debate.

kiwijamo• 3 years ago

When I use my phone for navigation it doesn't lock itself. I've observed this behaviour on iOS and Android.

MenhirMike• 3 years ago

Also, since the charging cable was technically still attached, I wonder if that turns it off as well.

dgrin91• 3 years ago

Doing a bit of research I found a few sources that say that the terminal velocity for a generic smartphone is ~20-40mph, which isn't that much. Lots of phones survive car crashes with higher speeds than that. Add to that landing on softer soil and maybe even breaking fall with branches and I'm not shocked it survived.

No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently

oldgradstudent2• 3 years ago

No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently

It looks like it has an intact screen protector. The impact does not appear to be that strong.

justin662• 3 years ago

20 MPH? If it's... attached to a parachute?

bagels2• 3 years ago

There's no way it's 20-40 mph. They're dense enough for much higher velocities.

throwaway20372• 3 years ago

First, hat tip for terminal velocity research. That is a nice addition to this discussion.

I was thinking exactly the same about the landing. If it lands in a soft place, like tall grass, most phones should be fine. Most phones are broken by falling onto hard surfaces.

whateveracct• 3 years ago

I have auto-lock disabled when I'm not in low power mode. Wish I could add an explicit toggle for it to my tray though.

pxeboot4• 3 years ago

Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?

Looks like that was the price for 2 bags, and it was just increased for tickets purchased this year [1].

[1] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke...

elzbardico6• 3 years ago

Non technical users do some things that we don't even dream about doing, like setting auto-lock to "Never".

EDIT: I see some people got offended with the bit about Non-Technical users and downvoted me to Hades. I apologize. Not everyone is paranoid like me.

tavavex2• 3 years ago

I honestly feel like technical users would be using the "Never" setting more often than non-technical. When testing an app on the phone, it's really annoying having to re-unlock it because you looked away at a different screen for a while. Checking it on Android, never locking is a developer setting, regular display settings have a maximum of 30 minutes.

TwoNineFive• 3 years ago

No, you are right, the plebs are wrong.

It's a feelz > realz world where people vote with their feelz and you made them feel bad because they are doing dumb bad things.

It should always be possible to set a device timeout to never and allow WEP56 auth on your WiFi AP, but there should be a warning about the implications.

planb2• 3 years ago

I have auto lock disabled, because I'm the one to decide when I don't need to look at my screen anymore. But that's different from not requiring faceid/passcode upon unlock.

throwaway20372• 3 years ago

I am technical, and I have no phone security (screen lock). I am sure that professional hackers can more easily steal my credentials remotely (phishing, etc) than from physical possession of my phone.

That said, I understand why most people want to use a phone screen lock.

I am sure this post will be downvoted.

stephenr7• 3 years ago

Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?

Based on https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke... it seems like that would be just two checked bags (not two extra bags, two bags!) and is irrelevant of your seat class? Be lucky the poor bloke didn't need a third bag, that's when it gets really expensive.

I guess I just have to chalk this up to yet another case of oddities in American flights I can't relate to.

spuz• 3 years ago

Well in Europe, you pay about £23 per flight just for a carry-on bag and £30 per flight for a check-in bag so I'm not sure things are any different here.

ptmcc• 3 years ago

American carriers heavily encourage fliers to get their branded credit cards in tandem with their loyalty programs, which often give perks like free checked bags, among other variously useful perks.

For example, if you have the Alaska credit card you get a free checked bag for each of up to 6 people on your reservation.

It sucks that they gouge infrequent passengers, but if you fly even a couple times a year the perks are worth the card fee for whichever airline you fly most.

Also, international flights often do have free checked bags regardless.

bombcar10• 3 years ago

Given the circumstances Alaska should refund the baggage fee

chihuahua• 3 years ago

I expect they will fight that refund tooth and nail.

lostlogin• 3 years ago

Boeing should cover Alaska’s costs.

unglaublich• 3 years ago

Lufthansa wanted $450,- for an oversized bag (300cm sides, 30kg) on a 3h flight. Awful company.

astrange11• 3 years ago

I flew them recently and was amazed at how low quality the English text on all their websites/emails was. It's about as bad as you'd see in Asia 15 years ago.

They did let me prepurchase a pretzel though. (And then never gave it to me on the flight.)

bombcar10• 3 years ago

It’s often cheaper to upgrade to first (and get free oversize bags) than to play the baggage fee. Always check!

butlike2• 3 years ago

Fuck Lufthansa. I bought a round trip, but bought a different flight out for circumstances not pertinent to the story. Anyways, on the return trip, they wouldn't let me check-in, for a flight leaving in 2 hours, with a valid ticket through them, because I didn't take the departure flight out.

I STILL don't understand the angle there, but I learned you can buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the world (except Australia and NZ), day-of; for about $2500.

olliej• 3 years ago

My first thought was if that hit someone it could kill them, and then i remembered an entire door fell off as well, and all apparently landing in a suburban neighborhood.

pants2• 3 years ago

There are a surprising number of injuries every year from phones falling out of roller coasters and hitting people!

labster• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, a 1 meter drop onto a wood floor cracked my screen. Device longevity is weird.

wenc• 3 years ago

No protective case?

elzbardico6• 3 years ago

I never trusted/liked protective cases. Modern phones are already too big, and I feel like the added bulk makes it more likely that I will drop it. Having been using the same IPhone 12 Pro Max for a few years now without a case. It has survived quite a few falls from a table by now, no screen cracked, only some dents and scratches on the chassis.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

Used an online calculator — even a meter falls takes the phone up to 10 MPH. Elsewhere in this thread 20 to 40 MPH was given as the terminal velocity of a phone. FWIW.

chippiewill2• 3 years ago

Presumably the destructive energy on impact will be proportional to the square of the velocity. Even at 20mph that's 4x the energy, 40mph is 16x the energy.

Realistically I think it's because the way a phone gets damaged is highly dependent on:

- Is it in a case - Which orientation did it land in - What surface did it land on

paulpauper• 3 years ago

landed on soft surface, plus a lot of spin

userbinator2• 3 years ago

It really depends on the angle of impact.

gia_ferrari• 3 years ago

My mom's iphone was dropped somewhere in the alps and found a year later by a hiker. Still worked after a charge, in fact the phone itself gave the hiker enough info to get it returned. My sister's phone fell out of a bike basket and was repeatedly run over by cars. We used the "find my" feature and found it in the gutter, screen pulverized, in the shape of a banana but still operational and communicative over USB. Tech can be surprisingly resilient if it doesn't suffer moisture incursion. Or it can die just sitting there like my old laptop's screen. Turned it off a month ago, put it on the shelf, tried to use it yesterday, only the hdmi port gives video.

justinclift2• 3 years ago

https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

Seems to have landed on soft terrain, which makes a world of difference.

The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.

btilly2• 3 years ago

I have a story about that, from the movie producer Fred Zinneman.

He was working on a movie and cast some paraplegics. One when asked said it was an accident, but didn't want to talk. Fred eventually got the story out of him.

He had been a paratrooper in WW 2. His parachute didn't open. But he landed in a big tree. Shaken, bruised, scratched up, and so on, but basically fine.

Climbing out of the tree he fell, and broke his neck.

It's the landing that does it, not the fall.

herewulf2• 3 years ago

Nitpick: The parachute likely opened _partially_ (as is common for such malfunctions) so that impacting a tree wouldn't cause injury or death.

That said, falling out of the tree checks out because that _is_ dangerous. Modern US Airborne training teaches a whole lot of caution when doing so. Best case you wait for someone to extricate you, but worst case (or for a combat jump), you deploy the reserve chute and then slide down it like a rope.

I don't know if they were using reserves in WWII (might have depended), but combat jump altitude is typically too low to have time to deploy your reserve. Better to chance the landing, than a hail storm of lead from the ground.

Source: 36 not-so-soft (non-combat) landings.

userbinator2• 3 years ago

I suspect the vegetation immediately above it also had a cushioning effect. Its owner was probably charging it while using it on the plane, and the force of the decompression was enough to snap the connector off.

upon_drumhead• 3 years ago

It says SOS mode, not airplane mode. Wonder why it’s not getting a cell signal. Maybe it is broken internally.

pxeboot4• 3 years ago

It could be using a non-US carrier without roaming enabled.

kemayo3• 3 years ago

The flight was from the US to Canada. It's very plausible that the cell plan doesn't have international roaming.

EDIT: per replies, this was entirely wrong, it was a domestic flight

20kleagues• 3 years ago

Flight was from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California - it was a domestic flight.

buffington• 3 years ago

My old iPhone is in SOS mode after having ported its number to a new one. Perhaps, since their phone was lost, they needed a new phone, especially after having experienced what they did, and ported their number to that new phone.

astrange11• 3 years ago

These days it'd be transferring the eSIM rather than porting to a new SIM.

aylaujp• 3 years ago

Apple's going to add plane crash to their crash detection marketing real soon.

hobs4• 3 years ago

They could have before, back when I worked for apple support I took call from someone who was in a small prop plane crash and called in because the laptop was still intact but the screen cracked; they ended up comping the entire thing (and some more stuff) because the story was good.

jackyard864• 3 years ago

Apple is really focusing on this tell and tale kind of adversiting recently, I guess.

kemayo3• 3 years ago

Are you implying that this is some sort of PR plant by Apple, or just saying this is the kind of thing they'll definitely be bringing up again later in actual PR?

jackyard864• 3 years ago

I've never seen a single article about Android devices being so durable that it survived a great disaster, or saving its owner's life from polar bear or something.

I believe it's their PR plan.

irrational2• 3 years ago

It is strange two phones have been found, but not the door. Most of the Cedar Hills/Beaverton area is houses and shops with sporadic green spaces that aren’t that large in comparison. It is possible the door fell into a green space, but the odds are it did not. I imagine it is in someone’s backyard, but it is January in rainy Oregon. People aren’t doing yard work right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t found until Spring when someone goes out to their backyard and discovers it.

It would be amusing if it fell into the lake on Nike Campus. It is fairly shallow, but if it was in the middle, it might not be noticed for a long time.

cozzyd• 3 years ago

The door can probably glide quite a bit farther, maybe?

photonbeam2• 3 years ago

The phones are trackable via gps

Tempest1981• 3 years ago

Boeing needs "Find My Door"

dredmorbius• 3 years ago

Apparently not a factor in this case, though true.

taylortbb• 3 years ago

The post says the phone was in airplane mode, and was found by chance as someone walked past it.

oldgradstudent2• 3 years ago

Not in airplane mode, though.

ars2• 3 years ago

The phone was in airplane mode, so not actually trackable.

rattus_rattus• 3 years ago

Edit: it has been found! I’m on mobile and not able to find a better link right now, but here’s an NTSB spokesperson discussing it: https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?id=100064737668850&story...

Sounds like the thing in the woods mentioned below was not the real deal and just some other bit of garbage or something that was dumped in the brush.

Previous comment:

I live in this neighborhood and saw a post on Nextdoor a little bit ago that indicates the door/panel may have been found. The text of the post is as follows: “My husband and I were walking the trail behind the Renaissance Town-homes near Barnes and Valeira View and we saw a large white oval object with a teal stripe on it in the brambles between the creek and Barnes Road. Two others saw it too and they called non-emergency. WCSO and the NTSB showed up but they could not affirm that that is what is was. As my husband said, nobody will know until they walk over to it. Unfortunately the undergrowth prevented us from doing so. We'll see, or not.”

The description of it having a teal stripe could match up with the missing panel, although we obviously can’t be sure yet if it is actually the missing part. I also saw a post from one of the folks who found a phone, and they had included a photo of where they found it, which I recognized to be fairly close to the place where the door was potentially found.

Sometimes we hear stuff on our roof, but it’s always just pinecones falling or a squirrel running around… makes me grateful we haven’t had a Donnie Darko scene in our yard or on our roof!

hackernewds• 3 years ago

that ain't it. here on a better source

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-d...

astrange11• 3 years ago

It's a little strange NTSB would show up but not be able to get to the door(-like object). Seems like a drone could fly over it.

8ig8• 3 years ago

They found it…

https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-...

irrational2• 3 years ago

So it was found in someone’s backyard.

graton• 3 years ago

The door was found. Here is the NTSB official YouTube channel where they discuss that it was found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Pfj8G7Rdg

sicklife• 3 years ago

That's remind me of Nokia. Maybe Apple has reached it's peak.

rad_gruchalski2• 3 years ago

My nokia never needed a condom, it would vomit its battery upon hitting the ground but after a little bit of massaging, it was fine.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

nokia never needed a condom

Neither does my iPhone. Unless cosmetic marks irritate you, they’re plenty durable without a case.

aaronbrethorst• 3 years ago

I hope Cuong Tran got his $70 for two bags refunded by Alaska Airlines.

snvzz2• 3 years ago

it was found... unlocked and displaying Mail application.

Sure this level of shock would have registered on its accelerometers, right?

How come it did not do the obvious right thing from a security perspective, which is to lock itself?

kiririn2• 3 years ago

A locked phone is exactly what you want in an emergency /s

snvzz2• 3 years ago

Emergency functionality works irrespective of lock status.

quickthrower22• 3 years ago

Same/similar shock as dropping the phone. Should it lock on drop? Weird feature to add.

akira25013• 3 years ago

I assume it partly depends on how much lateral velocity the phone had. If it landed at a good angle with respect to the train and "slid" away most of it's energy, then perhaps nothing unusual would be noticed.

Anyways is it the obvious thing to lock a phone merely because of a large jolt?

krallja2• 3 years ago

Boeing doesn’t make trains. This phone fell out of the sky.

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

This is why I have a little piece of retroreflective tape on my phone. How to wrap it on the front with the all-glass fronts is up to you.

MongoTheMad• 3 years ago

I am glad these phones were not Nokias. Who knows what damage they would have caused.

oaiey• 3 years ago

What a comment. But the young generation does not know anymore what this means.

DennisP• 3 years ago

I'm glad we know the cause of the accident now. If the FAA had just explained how severe the consequences would be if someone used a phone on a flight, I think we all would have been more compliant.

a-dub• 3 years ago

my eyebrows may have raised when they left washington years ago, but these recent safety incidents have really caused me to start to doubt the new whartonized boeing's commitment to sparkle motion...

zo1• 3 years ago

I honestly think that subtle and accepted incompetence is becoming pervasive all around, and airplane manufacturers aren't excluded from that. We need to strongly move back to a meritocracy otherwise our civilization will fall, one airplane door at a time.

astrange11• 3 years ago

The word "meritocracy" was popularized by a book whose point was that it's a bad idea that can't work. Trying it is eg how you get Peter Principled.

Sortition or other random promotion methods are actually the most theoretically correct afaik.

earth2mars• 3 years ago

What if it fell on someone's head? Would they have survived?

mulmen• 3 years ago

Depends how fast they are moving relative to the phone.

tgsovlerkhgsel4• 3 years ago

Really hard to tell for sure, but assuming it orients itself aerodynamically, exposing a 75x10mm surface area to the wind, with a drag coefficient of 1.0 (slightly less than a cube) and a mass of 180g, then omnicalc says it'd be moving at 225 km/h (62.5 m/s), giving a kinetic energy of 352 Joule.

If I had to guess - based on comparisons to energies cited for handgun bullets, less-lethal ammo, and punches - this could be fatal, but (given the relatively large size of the projectile) wouldn't be certain death.

There's also a chance of significantly more drag due to tumbling, which would likely put it into "most likely survivable but very, very painful" territory.

paganel• 3 years ago

And assuming that hypothetical person wouldn't have survived, who would have been made liable for the person's death? The owner of the phone? Air Alaska? Boeing?

dolmen3• 3 years ago

Reminder: meteors fall everyday on earth.

neilv• 3 years ago

I would've preferred that the identifying information of the person had been edited out.

The phone's owner experienced a traumatic incident. Which furthermore is under investigation.

Posting some kind of photo feels OK, however, since finding the phone is arguably newsworthy. And the Twitter poster says that it was open to that email, suggesting that they didn't go snooping through the phone. A little privacy redaction/cropping would've helped.

foota• 3 years ago

Maybe they did this to help the phone find it's owner?

ivan_gammel2• 3 years ago

Posting it online to find owner is absolutely unnecessary. The phone could be returned to the owner by contacting the airline.

pxeboot4• 3 years ago

I imagine this will end up in an NTSB evidence warehouse for years.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

would've preferred that the identifying information of the person had been edited out

Me too. But this is a faux pas at worst.

xuancanh• 3 years ago

The name in the email is a generic Vietnamese origin name, so while I agree with you about privacy, the post didn't expose much information about the owner.

wannacboatmovie2• 3 years ago

I have to agree with this.

Over 40% of Vietnamese share the same surname, and only about a dozen or so are in common usage.

The name reveals very little about the owner.

imgabe• 3 years ago

It's crazy to me that the phone hasn't locked automatically. Do people really walk around with their phones set to never lock and turn the screen off? Mine times out after 5 minutes.

rekoil2• 3 years ago

The fact that it was pulled out of the plane (and didn't stay snug in its owners pocket) suggests it was being used at the time, and thus unlocked. And yeah, I tend to set my phone to never lock at times, probably not while traveling I guess, but it absolutely happens.

addandsubtract• 3 years ago

The tweet said there was a broken off charging plug still in the phone. Maybe that kept it unlocked?

martin-adams2• 3 years ago

It depends on your settings I guess. I'll put my phone down on an app only to find out half and hour later it's still open.

Shank4• 3 years ago

I disable auto-lock. The primary reason for this is that I’m extremely intentional about using my phone. If I have some content open, I don’t want the screen turning off.

This is an atypical choice, but I always lock when I’m done and don’t encounter any issues from this choice.

0xEF• 3 years ago

As a rule, if the security feature creates even the slightest bit of inconvenience when using the device, you can bet your bippy that about half the user population will turn said feature off.

danielfoster• 3 years ago

Most people don’t expect their phones to be sucked out of airplanes.

al_borland2• 3 years ago

My auto-lock is set to 30 seconds, and I still manually lock it any time I put it down instead of waiting. I often see people put their phone down or in their pocket with the screen still on, and it just sits there for several minutes. It’s a pet peeve of mine. I have to assume these are the same people who complain about battery life all the time.

treffer• 3 years ago

Phone locks are mostly a protection against accidental loss (self inflicted or stolen).

But sometimes that's not worth the hassle. E.g. I disabled locks while my car was running.

The tradeoff is IMHO well worth it as I immediately take the phone from the car should I leave. So the overall risk is minimal. Yet should it ever distract me then that's a big issue.

And not being reachable was also not an option given family circumstances at that time.

It's just a risk vs. benefit tradeoff. And that's a very personal judgment call.

asylteltine2• 3 years ago

I agree. I see a lot of comments about “being intentional about using the phone” but in those cases the phone doesn’t lock anyway… using maps or watching something prevents auto lock. It just makes no sense at all to disable it.

inetknght• 3 years ago

Do people really walk around with their phones set to never lock and turn the screen off?

I set mine to lock and auto-turn off after a short moment.

Nonetheless, I have found that the phone will sometimes get in a state or screen which prevents autolocking. It does this usually at the same state or screen but it's easy to trigger accidentally without noticing.

...just pull down the top bar. That might happen if you're holding your phone and it gets sucked out of your fingers. Or stolen right out of your hand.

AriedK• 3 years ago

Especially since they did take the effort to redact the ending numbers of his creditcard number.

saalweachter• 3 years ago

As a matter of principle, you should always redact names, at least down to initials; as a matter of practice, I am not sure the name is any more identifying than eg "Mike Johnson". If you had Mike Johnson and the last four digits of a credit card, you might be able to identifying him from a database of leaked PII, although there may be enough of them to get a collision on that.

On the third hand, including the name doesn't really add anything to the story/image.

bogomipz• 3 years ago

It looks like they did redact the last 4 digits of the person's credit card number in the email. It seems odd they would have done this and not done the same for the name though.

spirit5572• 3 years ago

Obscured the credit card # but didn't think to grant the passenger some privacy and obscure their full name?

CyanBird• 3 years ago

Likely because the aim is to find the actual owner of the phone?

ivan_gammel2• 3 years ago

It is not very smart to find owner this way, when you can just reach the airline, which has contacts of all passengers.

astrange11• 3 years ago

Assuming the owner knows how to use their phone features, they can mark it lost in Find My with contact info. Or you can ask Siri what their address is.

spirit5572• 3 years ago

Really? You dont think the NTSB worker in the picture won't be capable of informing the owner/returning it after they collect it from the scene?

If I found the phone like that guy did my last thought would be to post pictures of the persons private emails and full name to the internet - and get a bunch of attention for it.

rramadass• 3 years ago

Damn! Apple has better QC than Boeing!

Apple should seriously think about getting into the Aeroplane Manufacturing business; its there for their taking :-)

justinclift2• 3 years ago

better QC than Boeing!

Clearly that hasn't been a high bar for a long time. :(

antomeie• 3 years ago

Remains to be seen if the door landed unlocked as well. /s

bombcar10• 3 years ago

Maybe the last command registered on this phone is “Siri open side door”.

vachina• 3 years ago

This must be some elaborate joke. How did that iPhone stay unlocked? The screen stayed on the entire time? And if the screen stayed on the entire time, how does the battery last that long? (In winter weather no less)

jeffhuys• 3 years ago

I have my phone set to never lock automatically, so that’s one part of the equation plausible.

evan_• 3 years ago

On airplane mode, not doing anything.

ImAnAmateur• 3 years ago

The person who found it said in a Tiktok video linked in the Twitter replies below that the phone didn't have a lock on it so he opened it up to that mail page.

I'm not gonna quibble about him changing his story, but it's notable.

nostromo• 3 years ago

I remember when you couldn't drop an iPhone four feet and have it survive. This one fell several thousand and the screen didn't even crack!

astrange11• 3 years ago

It's in an Otterbox and might have an extra screen protector though.

xivzgrev• 3 years ago

This isn’t surprising - there was a wired story about phones surviving from planes back in 2011 (1)

The gist is that it’s a light object and due to that + broad shape, its terminal velocity is not very high. Coupled that with the mass and there’s not a lot of force on landing. Of course the phone itself is fragile so it might not take a lot of force to break. Still, as long as it lands on something soft it might be ok, as we’ve seen!

(1) https://www.wired.com/2011/04/what-is-the-terminal-velocity-...

mrandish• 3 years ago

Yes, that and it also had a case and screen protector on it. Plus it landed on grass/dirt vs asphalt.

HenryBemis• 3 years ago

It landed on grass/dirt. On the photos on Twitter there seems to be some thick vegetation. Seeing the drops on the screen, if it has rained, then it would make the ground even softer.

If it would have landed on the asphalt, concrete, marble it would have looked very different!

tgsovlerkhgsel4• 3 years ago

the phone itself is fragile

Modern electronics are quite the opposite of fragile, I'd say.

bmitc2• 3 years ago

It's not a huge leap of faith to assume they mean the phone as in the thing covered in glass and fragile touchscreen.

paulddraper• 3 years ago

Then why does my phone break when I drop it?

NolF• 3 years ago

Because there isn't much difference in the force between a 1m and a 8000m drop due to the above. So it really comes down to case, angle, and material onto which it was dropped with corners being more vulnerable.

byhemechi• 3 years ago

because you’re dropping it on tiles or pavement which are a lot less squishy than the grass it landed on

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

No protection? I drop mine from time to time and never experienced any damage

masklinn2• 3 years ago

Surface, angle of contact, luck.

One of my phones made multiple falls onto asphalt and iron grates to no worse than superficial edge band scratches.

One day it flipped onto my desk from a few inches and that cracked the screen.

bufio• 3 years ago

Low LUCK attribute.

yread• 3 years ago

you're holding it wrong

nojs• 3 years ago

Does it? I have had a caseless iPhone for years, I drop it on hard surfaces a few times a week, and it’s fine except for a few scratches on the edges.

mcv• 3 years ago

It didn't have time to turn around and stretch in order to slow itself down.

Or maybe that's cats. Cats reputedly have a higher chance to survive a long drop than a short one because the long one gives them time to catch themselves and maybe slow down.

jack_riminton• 3 years ago

Well, it is quite surprising

paxys• 3 years ago

Where it lands is the biggest factor. A phone will almost never break if it falls on soft grass or mud. And no phone is surviving a high velocity drop onto concrete.

Angle of fall is another big one. From what I've seen phones are generally fine if they fall face up or down, but even a slight bump on the edges is enough to crack the glass.

michaelcampbell• 3 years ago

By the looks of the tweet, high possibility of some shrubs slowing it down and absorbing some energy before it came to a stop?

gnicholas3• 3 years ago

Looks like it was in a protective case — can anyone tell what kind?

astrange11• 3 years ago

Otterbox Lumen or similar.

MrOxiMoron• 3 years ago

this raises the question; what do people do with their iPhones to crack the screen? terminal velocity is not enough speed it seems.

speedgoose• 3 years ago

They drop it on harder surfaces than grass on mud or hit corners of furnitures with the phone in the pocket for example. I tend to do that.

nottorp• 3 years ago

If you have one of the idiotic models where the glass extends to the side, you just need to drop it on a hard surface. My iPhone XS is cracked now starting from two opposite corners. Funny enough, the touch screen still works perfectly, it's just the outer layer of glass that's gone so I plan to keep it 1-2 more years. [1]

The newer and older models with a metal band around the edges should be more resilient. I'm probably dropping phones with the same frequency [2], but the older ones with the metal were just fine(tm) when i stopped using them, just the metal band dented in places.

[1] I'd get it replaced but no way I'm paying Apple prices for this old phone, and the 3rd party repair shops warned me they may have to replace the whole display if the outer glass doesn't come off neatly and that will lead to iOS complaining it's not a genuine display onscreen.

[2] or maybe more often, since the rounded edges all glass design is easier to drop...

ta12433• 3 years ago

Why don't they make planes out of iphones -- or better make them out of Nokia 3210s

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

Not to accidentally trigger the 9/11 truthers (it's been too long for them to be around, yeah?) but this reminds me how several of the hijackers' passports were discovered near the various crash sites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTTBOM#Passports_recovered

epolanski• 3 years ago

Not gonna lie, I'm both awed and confused.

Awed it could resist 5000 meters freefall and still be operative 3 days later.

Confused as it did not lock for such a long time.

walteweiss3• 3 years ago

I don’t get it. The original tweet says the phone has been found near the road. Where are all the guesses that the phone fell from an airplane? Could it be someone opening email in the car, and someone else (a kid) to take the phone and throw it out of the window. Then they decide ‘oh, duck we don’t have time to look for it’ and continue their journey without the phone. That’s my first thought after reading the original tweet. But I see lots of ‘feel from the plane’ comments. Is it confirmed the phone fell? Of course I believe it survived the fall, considering I myself shuttered a number of iPhones by simply falling out of my pocket on a concrete floor.

shawabawa3• 3 years ago

The phone was open to an email of an Alaska Air flight confirmation for the specific flight that it fell out of. That's pretty solid evidence

walteweiss3• 3 years ago

Cannot the email be opened prior to the flight, while being in a car?

danbruc• 3 years ago

In 1972 flight attendant Vesna Vulović survived falling from 33k feet [1] pinned inside the remains of the fuselage after an explosion destroyed her airplane mid-flight killing everyone else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

beacham• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing. I thought this was the most interesting paragraph:

“Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food trolley in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact.[1][a] Vulović's physicians concluded that her history of low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly after the cabin depressurized and kept her heart from bursting on impact.[7] Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted.[3]”

bombcar10• 3 years ago

Is there anything an excessive amount of coffee can’t fix?

It seems she’s the opposite of that Hawaii flight that lost the roof and one flight attendant.

offices2• 3 years ago

I think the positioning is even more amazing than the survival. OP's feed doesn't look like they were intentionally searching for it, so the phone had to land close enough to a road/path for someone to be likely to walk past it and see it but not a) onto the road b) into the bush a few feet away.

hasty_pudding• 3 years ago

Boy Apple marketing tactics are getting creative.

steveBK123• 3 years ago

So I think we can now update the old "why don't they make the plane out of the stuff they make the black box out of" to "why don't they put the plane in an iPhone case?" right?

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

Isn't this good publicity for Apple? A phone that survives a 16,000 foot fall?

nojvek• 3 years ago

It seems crazy to me how much attention flying accidents get vs car accidents. No fatalities in this flight.

Flying is one of the safest modes of transport. And we have FAA and stringent training / maintenance processes to thank.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...

US has the highest death rate per million inhabitants. Even Russia is lower now.

~100 people die every day from car accidents.

If only car accidents were investigated with the rigor of flight accidents.

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

€$£.

Snow_Falls5• 3 years ago

Planes get so much attention precisely because they're so safe. If we reported ever car crash, we'd not have time for much else whereas planes hardly ever crash. Every crash is international news with national investigations because they hardly ever happen.

Now try explaining that to someone with a fear of flying.

meepmorp• 3 years ago

I think the comparative rarity of plane accidents is part of why they're such a big deal. I've been a number of car crashes and survived relatively unscathed. Neither I, nor anyone I know (and likely a few levels of separation further) has ever been involved in any aircraft accident/incident.

People are terrible at assessing risk. Big, scary things like falling out the sky seem like bigger risks because they grab attention, no matter what the stats say.

Someone• 3 years ago

FTA: “one revelation seemed to defy the laws of physics: one of the mobile phones that had been sucked out of the Boeing Co. 737 Max 9 jet’s cabin remained in functioning condition after a 16,000-foot tumble.”

I don’t know what the full paywalled article says, so they may say the same, but I don’t think that is very surprising.

The terminal velocity of a tumbling iPhone won’t be high (about 70km/hour, according to https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-terminal-velocity-of-a-falli...). It reaches that speed in a few seconds.

If, then, it drops on something that’s a bit forgiving, the deceleration won’t be excessive, and could easily be lower than that of dropping it on a hard concrete floor from a few meters high.

arghwhat2• 3 years ago

It's almost as if the laws of physics align entirely with the observed result! Baffling!

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

If the iPhone self-stabilized an acceleration maneuver while using its charging port speakers to build acceleration while playing Metallica, maybe it could reach the sound barrier and truly self-destruct.

wiseowise• 3 years ago

So you want to say that phone doesn’t accelerate to infinite speed and doesn’t pulverize itself (or Earth) on impact? WOW!

foobarian• 3 years ago

I wonder if a smart phone would actually behave differently due to its shape. As kids we loved to throw little paper rectangles because they fall by spinning around the long axis (try it!). Smartphones being rectangles, I could see it auto-rotate like this and slow down further.

jprd• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/hucUp

mx_03• 3 years ago

Once it reaches its maximum velocity the altitude doesnt really matter. However I dont know how to calculate that maximum velocity and the minimum required altitute.

From the very short snippet I can read (paywall) I dont know if the phone landed in concrete or not.

ciupicri• 3 years ago

What about the heat? If the fall is longer won't the phone heat up more?

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

And yet the air rushing past provides cooling....

Maybe you're thinking about an iPhone de-orbiting from ISS. That would be a different story.

simcop2387• 3 years ago

Nope, at the altitude planes are at, the atmosphere is much much colder than at ground level. Along with that the terminal velocity of the phone is going to be under the speed of sound so there won't really be any meaningful compression going on to heat up the air around it like you get with a descent from space. That heating essentially happens (this is simplified) because a space craft is going much faster than it's terminal velocity at the given altitudes it's passing through so it compresses the air below it, heating it just like you'd expect from the ideal gas law. It happens to be that it heats it so much that it makes a super-heated plasma so you end up with what looks like fire (not sure if there's actual combustion happening, but i wouldn't be shocked) surrounding the craft. That's also why once it's slowed down by the friction and air resistance, the plasma dissipates and is no longer a problem for re-entry.

Now if we were to launch the phone at several times the speed of sound we could probably get the same thing to happen but I'm doubtful that a phone could survive the acceleration in the first place.

eptcyka• 3 years ago

At the terminal velocity of an iPhone, the air passing through will do more to cool it than to heat it up due to friction.

MadnessASAP• 3 years ago

It would actually get quite cold, at 16000' you can expect the air to be well below 0 (pick your units, it's fuckin cold).

The only time heating becomes an issue is at supersonic velocities and is due more to compression of the atmosphere against the object then actual friction.

solomatov• 3 years ago

Drag (air friction) is proportional to the square of velocity. If you know aerodynamic properties of iphone, you could find a value of velocity where drag is equal to gravitational force, at which point the speed doesn't change. You could use it as an approximation of the speed at which iphone hits the ground.

9front2• 3 years ago

“It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush and it didn’t have a screenlock on it,” from the article. No information how big the bush was but it cushioned the landing.

mannykannot• 3 years ago

After its initial acceleration, the phone probably decelerated as its altitude decreased. The air density at 5 Km is about 0.6 of that at sea level. As drag is proportional to the air density and the square of the velocity, I think that implies the phone would reach the ground at a speed ~3/4 of its peak velocity (putting aside the admittedly significant issue of its orientation and rotation throughout the fall.)

mbauman2• 3 years ago

This isn't much more than the original twitter post: https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685

The most astonishing thing to me is the destroyed charger cable.

Also a good reminder that it's a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it's long.

earthling81182• 3 years ago

People in another spot were complaining that the auto lock maximum is apparently 5 minutes. It seems odd that this number isn't customizable.

diggan3• 3 years ago

Seems odd overall, yeah. But this is Apple we're talking about, they generally don't offer customisation. And when they do, they usually just offer a few options instead of freeform.

IE6• 3 years ago

Also a good reminder that it's a very good idea to have the screen lock after a set time — even if it's long.

It's wild to me especially with how important the device itself and email the device has access to can be that someone in 2024 did not have a screen lock enabled.

ngneer• 3 years ago

Hero protective case!

simplicio• 3 years ago

Good PR for Apple, less so for Boeing.

asdajksah2123• 3 years ago

Crazy considering multiple iPhones (latest being an iPhone 11) haven't survived a few feet fall for me (no case...I'm extremely particular about using a case now).

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

Must be a U-shaped curve of survival rate versus drop height.

kadoban• 3 years ago

Realistically it's more of a rounded L shape. Once you reach terminal velocity, you're not getting any more energy.

Then all you need is to get really lucky and/or hit something relatively soft, like grass on some less-dense ground.

CharlesW• 3 years ago

Also, how it lands (corner-first or not) and what it lands on (concrete or tile vs. dirt with ground cover) makes a huge difference.

lxgr2• 3 years ago

It's well established that intermediate fall heights are the most dangerous, since the phone doesn't have enough time to rotate into the optimal landing position and brace for landing. Or was that for cats?

earthling81182• 3 years ago

I've never owned an iPhone (never will either) but I'm in the opposite boat these days. Cases degrade my phone experience and result in more waste to throw away. These phones are seemingly built like tanks now. I'd be hard pressed to break the screen on this one. It's survived falls on concrete no problem. Generally I don't let it fall because it's too expensive to aimlessly drop.

kjkjadksj• 3 years ago

iPhones they brilliantly decided to make a rounded glass edge the first contact point for a lot of falls. All it takes is a few feet.

walteweiss3• 3 years ago

I broke iPhone 4, 5, 5s and 1 st. Gen. SE. All of them are quite small, and all also the 4th are light as well. I use cases, but those light ones, so they don’t add weight and add some protection. Mostly from scratches. In my case, all of them fell from some surface onto the floor. Usually it’s a metre distance. I think I never dropped a phone from my ear height, so not even 2 m.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

I had a spectacular break once. Sat my phone on my recumbent trike seat when I stood up, to take off my jacket. Went to pick up my trike, put it in the back of my truck and the phone spun off. About four feet off the ground.

Hit the cement spinning, which spiderweb cracked one corner. Not content with that, it bounced, now spinning in the opposite direction from the impact, hit on the other corner, spiderweb crack.

Now the bottom third of my phone was shattered glass with shards sticking out. And I had to call my team, learn their eta. One a week-long five hundred mile cycling tour.

Sucked.

ssivark• 3 years ago

The photos showed the phone had a cover/case — so maybe that’s very important? (contra Apple’s marketing)

Add in factors of hitting soft ground (grass/brush) and having enough height to rotate into a flat profile instead of hitting a corner.

Now I kinda wanna read about an experiment where someone drops a few hundred phones and compares various models

topkai222• 3 years ago

The charging cable was attached and ripped out with the phone, so it probably functioned as a tail, reducing the velocity a bit. Still, it wouldn’t be much. Impressive survivability by the phone.

mbauman2• 3 years ago

What remained of the charging cable was not much of a cable — it was barely the connector that remained.

https://nitter.net/SeanSafyre/status/1744247194448961725#m

topkai222• 3 years ago

Ahh, clearly I was wrong then. Truly impressive.

lxgr2• 3 years ago

Wow, if that's USB-C and it still charges, I'm going to stop worrying about reduced drop stability (while plugged in) compared to Lightning iPhones.

rainbowzootsuit• 3 years ago

Probably close to the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.

barryrandall• 3 years ago

This will be cited by Boeing as proof that the failure of their aircraft wasn't that bad.

sshillo• 3 years ago

Terminal velocity of an iphone should be around 110mph according to this https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6813341/T...

SirMaster• 3 years ago

And surely it doesn't need that height to achieve it. So at some point the height stops mattering.

hatsunearu• 3 years ago

It probably survived because it hit soft ground and not like granite or asphalt.

elorant• 3 years ago

There are also trees behind the spot so it could have landed on them and then ended on the ground.

9front2• 3 years ago

When did Mr. Bates, the X poster, find the phone? The time shows 2:21 and the picture was taken during daylight. Is that 2:21AM or 2:21PM? If in 12hr mode I'd expect the later.

K2L8M11N2• 3 years ago

In 24h mode it would show as 02:21.

kpw94• 3 years ago

My guess is, given state of the charging connector still attached but ripped off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38914210):

The entire thing fell out of plane (phone + charging cable plugged), then landed in a tree, where the charging cable got tangled in branches and that's when phone broke out of it and fell in grass.

So phone was able to release kinetic energy in 2 big events (+a few branches hit maybe), not a direct splash on the ground.

Wonder if somehow they can analyze the accelerometer data of the phone and figure out if that correlates with that scenario.

vedosity• 3 years ago

In skydiving, it isn't unheard of for someone to have their phone fall out of their pocket and survive impact without the screen shattering. That's from ~13000ft, but once the phone reaches terminal velocity, it's all the same impact force regardless of altitude.

I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.

ryandrake2• 3 years ago

I'm surprised it didn't break past the strain relief. Everyone with an iPhone has a handful of charging cables that end up like [1]. That's where they tend to fail first.

1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...

orev• 3 years ago

I’ve never had a cable break like that. Many people just don’t know how to handle cables and treat them like rope without any knowledge of bend radius, internal wire twists, etc. (and don’t care if they crush them).

stjuma• 3 years ago

A small piece of shrink tube fixes this. The difficult part is to squeeze it onto the connector

quaffapint• 3 years ago

I was in Costa Rica taking an aerial tramway which was about 75 ft up over dirt/rocky hill and my Pixel 6a (with just a basic back case) fell out of my pocket, hit the metal floor and fell out the doorway. The very kind tour people actually went and found it and returned it with not even a scratch on it. Not exactly 16,000 ft, but I was still amazed and felt very lucky. The only damage was my wife being right that I should have put a strap on it.

Jiro• 3 years ago

The amount of force created when something hits the ground at terminal velocity depends on its mass, which varies with the cube of its size (with additional effects because it's not a cube or sphere). The amount of cross-sectional area over which this force is exerted varies with the square of its size. So when a small object hits the ground, that's a lot less force per cross sectional area than when a large object hits the ground. You'd expect the iPhone to take proportionately less damage than a person even not considering that it also has a smaller terminal velocity.

ijhuygft776• 3 years ago

maximum speed comes way before 16000 ft... but either way, what surface did it fall on? It says on the side of the road, so Im going to guess grass.

neycoda• 3 years ago

Try dropping it from 2 feet and watch the screen shatter.

hhsectech2• 3 years ago

The terminal velocity of an iPhone is around 25-30mph. Past a certain height, it doesn't matter how high up the device is.

Dropping an iPhone out at 16,000ft is probably the same as throwing it off a tall building. I'd imagine a 3 or 4 storey building would be enough to reach terminal velocity.

jvidalv• 3 years ago

Interestingly, but last month while climbing (actually doing ferratas, if you don't know what it is check it out, very fun and friendly) in a mountain the phone fell of my pocket, easily 35 meters free fall onto the forest below.

I recovered it (by using find my, thanks Apple) and it was intact.

Two days later it fell out of my pocket while sitting in my tourism european car (short) into the concrete of the road and the glass shattered.

So yeah, the elevation doesn't seem to matter as much as the terrain it hits and the angle.

neop1x• 3 years ago

KPTV interviews with the guy who found it, the woman who found a headrest and the guy who found the door https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=To-viCd1Ow4

iPhone that fell from hole in Alaska 737 MAX flight is found, still open to Mail

Related Stories