Apple wants to make iPhones harder to break

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent for a "Protective mechanism for an electronic device" designed to safeguard iPhones from accidental drops. The patent application describes a system where an iPhone can recognise when it has been dropped, calculate an estimated point of impact and then reorient itself to avoid significant damage to components such as the camera or screen.

The protection system would take input from a combination of sensors including gyroscopes, accelerometers and GPS and use them to determine the phone's orientation, the distance to impact and the area of impact. The phone would then use an internal motor to change its angular momentum.