Apple May Have Finally Found A Way To Stop Your iPhone Screen Smashing

YES. We knew it all along. It was never our fault that our phones kept smashing. It was Apple’s. The tech giant should have known we would overindulge in Happy Hour. Why did Steve Jobs not pre-empt our love of cheap tequila and drunk dialling?

Now, in an effort to solve the most universal first world problem of our time, Apple have been awarded a patent for a game-changing technology to stop this tragedy ever occurring again.

Basically — instead of something simple like less fragile screens — Apple are seeking to implement some kind of anti-gravity wizardry that flips the phone in mid-air. Your iPhone would sense when it is falling and a mechanism would be set into action that turns the device onto either its side or its back.

Apple’s description of the process includes words like “onboard accelerometers”, “gyroscopes”, “rotational axis”, and “ultrasonic sensors”, but really it’s best described as the same kind of thing a cat does.

Obviously, this is still a while off becoming a reality. Often companies will file for patents with no immediate intention of employing the idea anyway — they just want to keep other people’s dirty mitts off it. The CEO of Amazon filed a patent a few years ago for a magical smartphone that deployed adorable mini-airbags mid-fall and, as amazing as it is, that’s still sadly absent from stores. This latest offering from Apple even concedes that the latest iPhone 6 doesn’t have the right kind of motor to facilitate such a glorious mechanism.

All in all, it’s a step in the right direction. Once Apple’s also figured out a way to cure hangovers, mend twisted ankles and find our house keys, they’ll have won us over completely.

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Photo: Andres Mager via Flickr CC.