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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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-...
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.
If it would have landed on the asphalt, concrete, marble it would have looked very different!
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.
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.
Modern electronics are quite the opposite of fragile, I'd say.
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.
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!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-d...
https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Pfj8G7Rdg
Dead Comment
* 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
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.
That said, I understand why most people want to use a phone screen lock.
I am sure this post will be downvoted.
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.
No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently
Deleted Comment
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.
It looks like it has an intact screen protector. The impact does not appear to be that strong.
Deleted Comment
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.
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...
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
They did let me prepurchase a pretzel though. (And then never gave it to me on the flight.)
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.
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.
I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.
1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...
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.
The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment