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An engineering student, Philip Frenzel, has developed a mobile airbag to relax you during the heart stopping moment when your smartphone is going to hit the floor.
This specialized case deploys spider like legs with springs as it begins to fall. The springy legs reduces the impact on a fall and is more reliable than your average mobile case.
Frenzel's design secured him a 2018 award from the German Society for Mechatronics, he pursued the idea because of his personal experience with a broken phone. One day, Frenzel's iPhone slipped out of his jacket pocket and crashed to the floor. The screen shattered and the phone never worked right again, even after the screen was fixed.
You can watch the device in action in the video below.
So he set himself to design something that could better protect a falling phone than your typical wraparound case. After some experiments, Frenzel landed on the idea of a specialized case fitted with sensors that could detect when a phone was in freefall state and deploy a set of retractable legs bound by metal springs in response.
Frenzel has named his invention "ADcase" where AD stands for "active damping". He has founded a startup together with Peter Mayer, a graduate in economics from Aalen University, in order to launch this invention as a product.
There's already an official ADcase website, and it suggests that the initial product offering will be limited to more recent iPhone models starting with the iPhone 6.
