The gist is that it’s a light object and due to that + broad shape, its terminal velocity is not very high. Coupled that with the mass and there’s not a lot of force on landing. Of course the phone itself is fragile so it might not take a lot of force to break. Still, as long as it lands on something soft it might be ok, as we’ve seen!

(1) https://www.wired.com/2011/04/what-is-the-terminal-velocity-...

Angle of fall is another big one. From what I've seen phones are generally fine if they fall face up or down, but even a slight bump on the edges is enough to crack the glass.

If it would have landed on the asphalt, concrete, marble it would have looked very different!

One of my phones made multiple falls onto asphalt and iron grates to no worse than superficial edge band scratches.

One day it flipped onto my desk from a few inches and that cracked the screen.

Or maybe that's cats. Cats reputedly have a higher chance to survive a long drop than a short one because the long one gives them time to catch themselves and maybe slow down.

Only the edges are a bit scratched up.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/LG_Nexus...

I recently dropped mine by tagging by earphone wire and it landed on the top corner with a spectacular bang and cracked the whole screen.

Though it's the second phone I drop with consequences, after Ericsson A1018s.

Other people usually aren't that lucky.

Modern electronics are quite the opposite of fragile, I'd say.

Not all phones are fragile. Ones with bodies made out of glass or aluminium are, ones with "nice to glide your finger along" glass screens can be. But those "features" are found in expensive phones.

Cheap phones, with their plastic bodies, flexible touch screens and removable batteries that tend to leave the case on impact are remarkably robust. As in "riding bike at 30km / hour, phone leaps out of pocket smashes into concrete gutter, covers and battery fly this way and that and so you have to dodge traffic to retrieve them" are perfectly fine after the incident, after reassembly. In fact on of my phones survived multiple rounds of that treatment.

Cheap phones being robust and expensive ones being delicate is a bug bear of mine. The one caveat is cheap phones are never water proof.

Cheap or expensive, I've never see the phones electronics damaged by an impact.

Old plastic phones were indestructible. I still have somewhere nokia 3310. It just refuses to die, unlike many smartphones I had.

Well for my money I think they're mostly nonsense.

I never use them and despite living in my pockets for years, my phone aren't scratched up. Cases are annoying and unwieldy, making it more likely I would drop my phone, and screen protectors make the screen look worse - which I think is what they're supposed to prevent?

I often go 5+ years with the same phone, so it's not like I write them off any faster. My S2 and S5 both lasted for ages, and they both still work perfectly fine - the only issue is that software "outgrew" them.

And there's absolutely 0 chance your screen doesn't have a ton of microscratches.

The entire thing fell out of plane (phone + charging cable plugged), then landed in a tree, where the charging cable got tangled in branches and that's when phone broke out of it and fell in grass.

So phone was able to release kinetic energy in 2 big events (+a few branches hit maybe), not a direct splash on the ground.

Wonder if somehow they can analyze the accelerometer data of the phone and figure out if that correlates with that scenario.

I think dirt/grass is just a lot softer than the things we usually drop our phones over, like concrete or tile.

1: https://www.engadget.com/apple-patent-application-frayed-cab...

It would be amusing if it fell into the lake on Nike Campus. It is fairly shallow, but if it was in the middle, it might not be noticed for a long time.

Sounds like the thing in the woods mentioned below was not the real deal and just some other bit of garbage or something that was dumped in the brush.

Previous comment:

I live in this neighborhood and saw a post on Nextdoor a little bit ago that indicates the door/panel may have been found. The text of the post is as follows: “My husband and I were walking the trail behind the Renaissance Town-homes near Barnes and Valeira View and we saw a large white oval object with a teal stripe on it in the brambles between the creek and Barnes Road. Two others saw it too and they called non-emergency. WCSO and the NTSB showed up but they could not affirm that that is what is was. As my husband said, nobody will know until they walk over to it. Unfortunately the undergrowth prevented us from doing so. We'll see, or not.”

The description of it having a teal stripe could match up with the missing panel, although we obviously can’t be sure yet if it is actually the missing part. I also saw a post from one of the folks who found a phone, and they had included a photo of where they found it, which I recognized to be fairly close to the place where the door was potentially found.

Sometimes we hear stuff on our roof, but it’s always just pinecones falling or a squirrel running around… makes me grateful we haven’t had a Donnie Darko scene in our yard or on our roof!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-d...

https://lite.cnn.com/2024/01/07/us/alaska-airlines-faa-plug-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Pfj8G7Rdg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

Have to admit, amazing plot and production, all in a minute!

[0] Full list https://support.apple.com/en-au/102412

The same behavior as turning off the phone.

Honestly did not consider that.

I do it because cell reception is quite poor at my house so calls are better off staying on wifi - also battery life is improved.

* The iPhone owner didn't put a password/passcode?

* Damn, he paid Alaska $70 for baggage fee?

* Now we know an iPhone will survive falling from the sky

EDIT: I see some people got offended with the bit about Non-Technical users and downvoted me to Hades. I apologize. Not everyone is paranoid like me.

edit: I just checked and indeed the settings screen says it watches for attention, so I'm willing to give it a try and enable auto unlock now...

A phone screen lock is a low friction, low cost solution for mitigating that small but impactful risk.

For example, you might take a flight, the plane break in flight and your phone is sucked out, falls on the ground and a stranger finds it.

Don't tell me I'm paranoid and that this scenario is not realistic.

While your uber drive is taking you home, you sleep while using your phone and it falls from your hand without you noticing.

The next passenger is not an honest person.

I like going out at night to bars and restaurants and having a "few" beers or one or two bottles of wine with my wife.

Me and my wife have lost a phone in a Uber after a night out (recovered in both situations, though).

I am not a mobile developer.

Autolock makes a lot of sense to me.

It's a feelz > realz world where people vote with their feelz and you made them feel bad because they are doing dumb bad things.

It should always be possible to set a device timeout to never and allow WEP56 auth on your WiFi AP, but there should be a warning about the implications.

No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently

I was thinking exactly the same about the landing. If it lands in a soft place, like tall grass, most phones should be fine. Most phones are broken by falling onto hard surfaces.

It looks like it has an intact screen protector. The impact does not appear to be that strong.

Of course that assumes it’s falling facing its largest surface, and not tumbling or a falling edge first. Obviously that is trickier to calculate, but 20-40mph doesn’t seem that unreasonable.

Edit: it takes ~3 seconds to reach 99% terminal velocity.

That was what I was thinking: surely it wouldn't be stable falling face-first? Wouldn't it be more likely to either tumble or settle on an edge?

There's also the possibility that it behaves more like an airfoil, and starts generating lift once it's going fast enough.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=terminal+velocity+of+an...

putting mildly, still it's lovely to see the mix the input of imperial and metric units.

the 'fluid' density is quite wrong as well. 1.29 kg/m^3 -> almost 777 times lighter than water, it's similar to air. By its dimension iphone 15 should be around twice heavier than water.

It's very possible the phone has a passcode but was sucked out while someone was using it, and never put to sleep.

Also worth noting the owner had a screen protector, so that may have quashed that everlasting debate.

Looks like that was the price for 2 bags, and it was just increased for tickets purchased this year [1].

[1] https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke...

Based on https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/baggage/checke... it seems like that would be just two checked bags (not two extra bags, two bags!) and is irrelevant of your seat class? Be lucky the poor bloke didn't need a third bag, that's when it gets really expensive.

I guess I just have to chalk this up to yet another case of oddities in American flights I can't relate to.

I just looked up a flight, for example London to Paris. The cheapest BA ticket includes hand luggage for £57 each way, or the next option with checked baggage is £14 more.

I'm sure there probably are cheap-and-shit airlines that include nothing with the ticket price as you mention, but there clearly are also options where you pay a small fraction more (and certainly less than "additional baggage" charges) and have baggage included.

The latest innovation of low cost airlines, as of a few years ago, is to charge for even the hand luggage in an overhead bin. You can only take a really small bag which fits under the seat in front without paying. BA haven't yet got to that level (although I'm sure they will with time). BA tend to be 30-50% more for the base ticket though - so you pay for it one way or another.

And you framed it as if every American airline charges extra for any baggage of any kind

I didn't proclaim "American airlines charge you extra" did I?

For example, if you have the Alaska credit card you get a free checked bag for each of up to 6 people on your reservation.

It sucks that they gouge infrequent passengers, but if you fly even a couple times a year the perks are worth the card fee for whichever airline you fly most.

Also, international flights often do have free checked bags regardless.

They did let me prepurchase a pretzel though. (And then never gave it to me on the flight.)

I STILL don't understand the angle there, but I learned you can buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the world (except Australia and NZ), day-of; for about $2500.

Besides, why would the NTSB hold onto the phone for years? It's not part of the aircraft, there's no real reason why they'd need to have it at all. Is it just common with US government agencies?

If I found the phone like that guy did my last thought would be to post pictures of the persons private emails and full name to the internet - and get a bunch of attention for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87

“Air safety investigators attributed Vulović's survival to her being trapped by a food trolley in the DC-9's fuselage as it broke away from the rest of the aircraft and plummeted towards the ground. When the cabin depressurized, the passengers and other flight crew were blown out of the aircraft and fell to their deaths. Investigators believed that the fuselage, with Vulović pinned inside, landed at an angle in a heavily wooded and snow-covered mountainside, which cushioned the impact.[1][a] Vulović's physicians concluded that her history of low blood pressure caused her to pass out quickly after the cabin depressurized and kept her heart from bursting on impact.[7] Vulović said that she was aware of her low blood pressure before applying to become a flight attendant and knew that it would result in her failing her medical examination, but she drank an excessive amount of coffee beforehand and was accepted.[3]”

It seems she’s the opposite of that Hawaii flight that lost the roof and one flight attendant.

The bit of charging cable ripped at the bottom still tells how harsh the journey was before the landing.

He was working on a movie and cast some paraplegics. One when asked said it was an accident, but didn't want to talk. Fred eventually got the story out of him.

He had been a paratrooper in WW 2. His parachute didn't open. But he landed in a big tree. Shaken, bruised, scratched up, and so on, but basically fine.

Climbing out of the tree he fell, and broke his neck.

It's the landing that does it, not the fall.

That said, falling out of the tree checks out because that _is_ dangerous. Modern US Airborne training teaches a whole lot of caution when doing so. Best case you wait for someone to extricate you, but worst case (or for a combat jump), you deploy the reserve chute and then slide down it like a rope.

I don't know if they were using reserves in WWII (might have depended), but combat jump altitude is typically too low to have time to deploy your reserve. Better to chance the landing, than a hail storm of lead from the ground.

Source: 36 not-so-soft (non-combat) landings.

The phone's owner experienced a traumatic incident. Which furthermore is under investigation.

Posting some kind of photo feels OK, however, since finding the phone is arguably newsworthy. And the Twitter poster says that it was open to that email, suggesting that they didn't go snooping through the phone. A little privacy redaction/cropping would've helped.

This is an atypical choice, but I always lock when I’m done and don’t encounter any issues from this choice.

I try to avoid modern Boeing aircraft as well.

I also almost never use apps like dedicated banking apps or social media apps; instead, using Safari.

I know folks that don’t lock, and don’t use Face/Touch ID, because convenience (or paranoia).

I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We have our whole lives in these devices, and they could do a lot of damage.

There’s an old movie, called Taking Care of Business[0], where Jim Belushi finds Charles Grodin’s date planner, and takes over his life.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_Care_of_Business_(fil...

Nearly every bank I know of recommends using apps over their website, since in general they're safer than using their websites. But I'm in The Netherlands and I don't know whether banking apps in different countries have the same security standards.

Social media and store loyalty apps are basically just PID harvesters.

In fact, I have a couple of solitaire games that are constantly nagging me to join leaderboards and take community challenges.

All my financial transactions are done with my Mac, which sits behind a fairly robust home network.

I know, for certain, that banking apps are the #1 first target, for hackers.

Of course this is actually "phone factor authentication" and not two-factor authentication, but I kinda need a bank account.

When I first run an app, and it asks for access to camera, microphone, photos, calendar, contacts, and location, I tend to immediately plonk it; regardless of its purpose.

I have a PMB, and the store has an app that uses the phone to unlock the door, after hours.

There is a keypad, but that hasn't actually worked, in months, and the store has ignored my reports.

I just go there, during business hours, even though it's inconvenient.

Basically the phone is the 2FA generator.

Even though some scum corps like Chase make it a PITA to manage my account from a desktop through firefox, that's the only way I'm going to interact with them.

"Download the app!"

Hard no!

In fact these are the only apps I think that appear regularly on my phone, but only when I'm traveling: AirBnB, Uber/Lyft, and whatever airline I'm currently flying on next. I think if I'm crossing borders I've installed whatever gov spyware makes TSA/Global Entry easier. They're already groping me hard, why not.

LA Fitness gets to stay because it's dumb and silent. I don't see anything else not security related. On mobile I talk to the outside world with K-9, firefox, signal, whatsapp, sms. I'm happy.

My fix was to create an entirely new profile, with no customization, no cookies restrictions, no add-ons, and use it only for financial sites.

I then exit my current FF, and switch to it, and back again.

All my issues vanished after doing that.

You could also create a different user in Linux, and isolate that way.

Hope it helps.

FWIW, you can also run multiple profiles simultaneously. They are independent processes, sharing no resources or permissions.

This is my model for difficult sites. If I'm really concerned, I use FF network config to allow access only to the domains I think are proper.

Although in the case of banking, I prefer to use the official mobile apps. Some are actually pretty good. Others are awful. But I trust the iOS app sandbox and I trust my banks.

I also block traffic at the network level, so if the bank app attempted something egregious (e.g. tracking via the basket of Internet deplorables), it would fail.

The security model for US banks is that it's illegal to do crimes to people's bank accounts. It doesn't involve "super secure apps", bank account numbers and credit card numbers are super insecure and there is little reason you should care about this insofar as you're not liable for leaking them.

With a web browser, there's no way of doing that by design as the user has full control over their user agent, so you need to trust the end user is following good security practices and hasn't allowed their user agent to become compromised.

However, in the EU, banks are legally liable for financial loss caused by unauthorised transfers, so they are increasingly not willing to trust that the user hasn't just loaded their browser up with malicious extensions and malware.

Credit cards will give you the benefit of the doubt with a credit while they investigate. Banks (and credit unions) are going to be VERY hesitant to give you a 5-figure advance into a new checking out while they investigate how your account got drained when it initially looks like you did it. Even the most pro-customer policies practicable won't help when now all your automatic payments start failing. It's certainly a recipe for ruining your week and you'll likely spend the next month or two dealing with the fallout, and that's assuming you don't face crippling financial penalties because of it, which the majority of Americans would.

But it's fun when you get your checking account drained, and it takes weeks to get it back.

I've seen that happen to a couple of folks.

That's also why I don't like to link my account to sites like PayPal and Venmo.

If they have access to the recovery email and your phone then they have the keys to the house anyway.

I found someone’s Apple Watch that had no password. I could have done a ton of nefarious things if I’d been inclined. Had a different person picked it up, they might have had all their accounts hijacked.

I hear your point, but everything really important on my phone is behind another wall of passwords/pin protection, and I am meticulous about backups. The physical device doesn’t matter much. I’ll put it on stolen mode remotely, force an email sign out, and just assume it’s dead because they won’t be able to turn off Find My.

I also work from home, so I’m more suited to having it in this mode of operation.

That said, from now on I'll probably have auto-lock turned on when flying.

I think you are far far more likely to have a random cardiac arrest or stroke while you are looking at your phone than have it ripped out of your hands in an airplane. The former has happened to several otherwise healthy people I know and the plane thing happened to a few people ever.

Also do you turn it on while you are a passenger in a car or bus?

My phone has the fingerprint sensor. I don't use faceid.

I have a co worker who I won't ride with anymore simply because of that.

The same person who's super disciplined about seat belts likely takes other risks that another person would deem at least as serious.

Having an optional reminder feature is great; forcing it, not so much.

Doesn't take much FOD on the highway for your unbuckled body to slam into something and now you have a driverless vehicle. Also every else in your car should be bucked too so you're not bumping noggins.

Is this how far you're willing to go to boss other people around to fit your preferences?

Or is it just the job of the survivors or your bullshit to sue your estate into non-existence?

Avoiding a car crash in the first place would definitely be the better alternative.

Do you think of the 6 million police reported auto crashes in 2022 (in the US if you're not from here) that most if not all the people involved would have rather not been in an accident in the first place?