You might’ve dropped your iPhone on the floor and felt massive relief to find it undamaged. Or maybe a bit cracked. But what happens when an iPhone plummets 14,000 feet?
Thanks to TikTok and a skydiver who failed to secure his handset, now we know. At least in this one very lucky case.
Skydiver’s iPhone plummets 14,000 feet and comes out of the ground working fine
Skydiver Hatton Smith, aka capt_rumcoffee, posted a video on TikTok with the title, “What happens when you leave your iPhone in your pocket when you go skydiving?”
In the short video, you can see Smith and some friends jump out of an airplane. Right after Smith goes through the door, you can see his iPhone fly out of his jacket pocket and sail off behind him.
Right away the video cuts to Smith and others on the ground, dislodging the iPhone from the earth and finding it amazingly undamaged and in working order.
Two factors seemed to contribute to that: One, the iPhone landed in a soft, grassy soil (and wedged itself an inch or two in). And two, as Smith points out repeatedly in his post’s comments section, the handset had a protective, waterproof Catalyst case on it.
Smith appears to give the case most of the credit. He even said, “the phone case company won’t email me back. Blow this up so we can make a commercial for them.” Several commenters suggested the video is an ad.
And though iPhones are pretty tough on their own, another commenter joked thusly: “There is no in between with iPhone they’re either indestructible or crack from a 1 foot drop on carpet.”
But a 14,000-foot drop? No problem. Other commenters cited “terminal velocity,” suggesting a thin, lightweight object like an iPhone won’t see much difference between drops of 20 feet and thousands of feet.
Watch the video:
@capt_rumcoffee When your phone falls out of your pocket at 14,000 feet #fail #screammovie
