A patent does not always translate into a product. Current law encourages companies to patent as many ideas as possible in order to protect themselves in the future from possible legal attacks from the competition. The latest Apple patent, however, would be at least curious to see implemented in an iPhone. It is a system that allows the phone to rotate in the air during a fall to prevent the screen from breaking.
The system uses the phone's accelerometers to calculate the rate of fall and orientation in space and in doing so it alters the phone's center of gravity using a mobile weighing system.
Nowadays it is a complex idea to integrate inside the phone without considerably increasing the size, weight or reducing the autonomy, but in the future it could be the difference between a smartphone with a broken screen or one with only a small scratch.
This, however, is not the only idea exploring ways to protect your phone during a fall. Amazon recently patented an "airbag" system that would also use a similar procedure. When detecting a fall, the phone could use small jets of compressed air to reorient itself in space and even cushion the impact in the last few thousandths of a second.
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