The ultimate iPhone 6 drop test... from space
One of Apple's latest froze up on its way up to the stratosphere, but you'll want to see if it broke up when it came back down.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
I'm sure I'll eat these words one day, but it seems that we've finally witnessed an iPhone drop test that can't conceivably be topped.
We've seen iDevices dropped from planes and stuck in molten lava, but the below video of an iPhone 6 descending from the edge of space seems to be about as far as gravity's effects can be pushed, short of tossing an iPad into a black hole.
As usual, the effort is part of a campaign to sell us something. This time it's Urban Armor Gear's composite iPhone case, which protected the silver iPhone 6 in question as it rose from the English countryside with the help of a balloon and a flight rig with two GoPro cameras, GPS and a backup phone. The phone ascended over 100,000 feet to the stratosphere before the balloon ruptured and the device began to fall.
A parachute did deploy to prevent the phone from becoming a potentially lethal projectile, but it still had to withstand temperatures of -79 degrees Fahrenheit that killed the charge in its battery, 70 mile per hour winds and 150rpm spins. The landing was a bit rough and broke up the flight rig, even with the parachute, but the phone survived and was still fully functional after being recharged. You can watch the full video below.
Now, if anyone has a wormhole we can borrow, perhaps it's time to start planning that black hole test...