NEW A vastly improved search engine helps you find the latest on companies, business leaders, and news more easily.<doc-sep>The only thing worse than selling a kidney to buy an expensive phone is dropping said expensive phone and having your heart sink as you pick it up to see a crack running across its beautiful screen. Not many people enjoy putting covers on their phones because of the added bulk. It makes much more sense to take care of your gadget than to give in to the paranoia and buy a thick case that hides your phone’s sleek design, but Philip Frenzel, an engineer at Aalen University in Germany may just have the best solution. The Handyairbag is a relatively thin phone case that does a much better job of protecting your phone from accidental slips than most. When your phone’s in freefall, eight curled metal legs magically pop out from inside the case (think Spiderman’s spider-suit from Infinity War), curling around the front and back of your phone. They absorb impact like springs (or an airbag, like the name suggests), as your phone bounces around without ever making contact with any surface. These curled metal ‘legs’ (for the lack of a better term) can be flattened and pushed back into the slim phone case for another day, another mishap. The Handyairbag taps into your phone’s accelerometer, knowing when it’s in freefall and triggering protective measures the minute it senses that your phone’s falling. There’s still a lot we don’t know, for example would the Handyairbag accidentally trigger in your bag if you dropped it, or in your pocket if you sat down too fast (although there are workarounds, like tapping into the proximity sensor), but I’d rather have eight strange metal legs spring out in my pocket than let anything happen to my $999 phone! At the end of the day, a slim case is a small price to pay for keeping your expensive social-media-and-selfie-machine intact! Designer: Philip Frenzel<doc-sep>Dropping your $1000 iPhone X can be a costly and traumatic experience, but a clever student in Germany may have found the perfect solution: built-in airbags. Philip Frenzel, a student from Aalen University in Germany, invented a new form of smartphone protection called the AD Case. Instead of using actual airbags though, AD Case packs built-in sensors that detect when a phone is dropping and then deploys eight springs that actively dampen the fall. Prepare to be amazed: AD Case looks like it performs miraculously when dropped over a smooth surface, but it might not be as reliable on rocky uneven surfaces. The prototype won Frenzel the top award from the German Society for Mechatronics. No word on when or if the AD Case will actually hit the market. A patent for it has already been registered though, so it could eventually make its way to the market. Hopefully, with a slightly less ugly form factor.<doc-sep>Just like passengers in a car, your cell phone is precious cargo. So why shouldn't it have an airbag similar to your vehicle? One ambitious engineering student, Philip Frenzel, is seeking to remedy this, as he has invented a "mobile airbag," recently spotted on Reddit. Frenzel's design begins with a thin protective case, outfitted with sensors that detect the free fall of a phone. Once airborne, metal springs deploy to cushion the fall. You can then push the attachments back into the case and reuse when necessary. Frenzel refers to his invention, which recently won Germany's Mechatronics Prize for 2018, as the "AD Case," short for "active damping." The Aalen University student plans to launch a Kickstarter for the project in July with hopes of funding his product. It should be worthy of note, however, that Amazon secured a patent for a similar design back in 2012. But for more on Frenzel's innovative "mobile airbag," follow here. In other tech news, Apple's next AirPod case will reportedly double as an iPhone charger.<doc-sep>
Most smartphone cases are designed to protect your mobile device from minor scrapes, bumps, or falls… but drop your phone screen-first onto concrete and you’re probably out of luck unless you’ve got some serious screen protection. The AD Case could change that. It’s like a mobile airbag for your smartphone, with a set of springs that extend when the phone is in freefall, preventing the screen, back, or edges from touching the ground. The case was developed by German college student Philip Frenzel, and while it’s not a real product that you can buy yet, the design did win an award from the German Society for Mechatronics, and Fenzel has registered a patent for the design. While the airbags in a car expand upon impact, that would be too late to save a phone from damage in most situations. So the AD Case uses sensors to detect when a phone is falling and extend a set of metal springs to dampen the impact. AD, by the way, stands for Active Dampening. It’s certainly possible that a phone could fall in such a way that the springs located near each corner wouldn’t help. For example, if you happen to drop the phone screen-first onto a sharp, pointed object. But for most falls onto a relatively flat surface, the AD Case seems like it would be helpful. If your phone does survive a fall, all you need to do is fold up the springs so that they’re ready the next time you drop your phone. Frenzel and a partner plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign in July to raise money to bring the AD Case to market. There’s no word on the price or when the team expects to ship the first cases to backers. via Hacker News Share this article: Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Pocket Tumblr Pinterest LinkedIn Email