We have heard several stories of iPhones falling from a plane, falling several thousand meters, only to end up in perfect working order on the ground. But how is this possible?
In a video from the Wall Street Journal YouTube channel, journalist Johanna Stern wanted to test the durability of our smartphones. To do this, she threw several iPhone 14s and Samsung Galaxy S23s from a height of 300 feet, or 91.44 meters, from a drone. The conclusion is clear: smartphones have survived perfectly. Even the screens seem to have held up miraculously well.
But 91.44 meters is not the 5,000 meters of the Alaska Airlines flight a few months ago. So how can we explain survival at such a height? The answer is simple: terminal velocity.
After a certain time, during a fall, the speed of an object, and therefore of a smartphone, reaches a sort of maximum threshold: this is terminal speed. Once this threshold is reached, it doesn’t matter if the fall takes place from 90 meters or 5000 meters, the results will be more or less the same…
There is actually a variation: the surface on which the smartphone lands. In the case of the WSJ test, Johanna Stern first dropped the phones into some grass. The result is clear: there was no apparent damage. On asphalt, the front of the iPhone was intact, while the rear window was slightly broken.
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