We all love our smartphones and dread the moment when they slip from our hands and crash to the floor, or worse, the pavement. But engineers at Honda’s wonderfully insane lab may have developed a solution to save our beloved devices from the worst of falls. The smartphone airbag functions perfectly but there are a few limitations that stop it from becoming a practical gadget.
In a recent video, Honda shows a disappointed scientist who lost cat photos due to an accidental fall of his phone. The scientist goes on to drop different phones and takes notes in order to gain data for his research. There is one point in the video where he watches as phone after phone falls off a conveyor belt and quickly scribbles notes after each drop.
The smartphone case is the size and thickness of a voluminous novel, making the phone look like a small attachment on the case (instead of the other way around). The case does, however, work well, deploying six little airbags to protect the phone completely. The airbags are deployed by the accelerometer which senses when the phone is dropped.
Honda, fortunately, does not plan to release the case to the public due to certain (and obvious) safety issues. For one, the case could go off in one’s pocket (if a pocket large enough can be found to fit the case in) and injure the user. Head injuries can also be caused if the case were to deploy its airbags while the user was in the middle of a call. Luckily, this airbag case won’t be available in markets, but it’s nice to see the creative (and somewhat comical) side of the auto-giant company with this creation.