An Airbag for Your iPhone? Amazon Patent Indicates It May be Possible
Amazon executives have apparently been thinking about more than just books. CEO and President Jeff Bezos and Vice President Greg Heart have come up with a scheme that utilizes airbags to protect smartphones from slippery fingers.
In a patent submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Bezos and Heart detail "a system and method for protecting devices from impact damage."
The patent was submitted in February 2010, but was discovered online Thursday by writers at tech site GeekWire.
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The idea of an airbag on an iPhone may sound simple enough, but the possibilities Bezos and Heart detail in the patent sound like an invention one might expect from NASA scientists.
The pair detail three potential methods for saving a falling phone from possible disaster. A safety monitoring system would determine that the device is no longer in its owner's hand and:
1. Deploy airbags to cushion the device or
2. Expel gas to propel the device upward or
3. Deploy springs from the back of the device for a bouncy landing
Bezos and Heart also suggest similar systems for other handheld devices, such as tablets, mp3 players, and video cameras.
Although there is no date for when the internal safety system for handheld devices would actually come into existence, the Amazon executives might have struck gold.
One can only imagine how many cell phones would be spared every year, and how many dollars might be saved, if such a safety feature came standard with every phone.
