iPhone stops bullet during mugging

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

"He said [the iPhone] saved my life."

That's the word from the roommate of a graduate student at California State University, Fresno, who, according to Fresno police, narrowly avoided being shot during a mugging this week.

As the Fresno Bee reports, the student was returning to his apartment at night when an assailant pointed a gun at him and made a grab for his laptop bag. The attacker fired a shot, but the bullet angled off an iPhone in the student's pants pocket, shattering the phone's screen but apparently leaving the victim physically unscathed. There was no blood to be seen, the student's roommate told CBS Fresno.

Some will speculate that being shot in the leg isn't necessarily a sure route to losing one's life. Still, the incident must have been frightening.

Indeed, the graduate student packed his bags the next morning and got out of town, and the assailant is still at large.

This isn't the first report of a phone deflecting a bullet. Last year, a Samsung Galaxy Mega phone was said to have stopped a bullet during a fight in China. In that case, the Mega was in the man's shirt pocket.

And experiments (perhaps not entirely scientific) have been conducted to see how many iPhones it would take to stop a bullet fired from a Russian assault rifle.

The Fresno Police Department wasn't immediately available for comment on this recent incident. But Lt. Joe Gomez told CBS Fresno: "It's very important to watch your surroundings."

That's good advice. You can't expect your phone to protect you all the time.