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If you find someone who works on phone design for a modern phone manufacturer, I imagine they can tell you about hundreds of tiny unnoticed design elements whic
by jacobolus 9y ago
If you find someone who works on phone design for a modern phone manufacturer, I imagine they can tell you about hundreds of tiny unnoticed design elements which serve to make the phone more robust against falls. I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor.
I have seen a rotary phone in a thrift store with plastic bits chipped off from a fall, and I imagine there are other phones which never made it to the thrift store because their mechanisms broke after falling. I suspect that given equivalent falls the modern high-end smartphones will withstand them better on average than old Bell phones (especially if you drop the full phone and not just the handset). It would be an interesting test though.
But telephone falls weren’t too common 40–100 years ago because they were enormous, attached by a robust cord, and didn’t get carried around in a pocket or purse all the time, held across the fingers while being manipulated with a thumb, or used to take selfies.
The best way to make smartphones more robust without compromising other essential attributes is to use stronger materials and a slightly grippier surface finish. The newer Apple phones have reportedly improved along these lines (the one I have is a few years old, so who knows..). For a customer who cares deeply about protection from falls, it’s always possible to wrap one of these things in a thick rubber shell.
Extra physical protrusions etc. are discarded from smartphones because they make them much less pleasant to hold in a pocket.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoRotary phones are much, much better at surviving the expected hazards of their intended environment than smartphones. The exact frequency of falls is irrelevant.
- jacobolus 9y agoThat’s fine, but there’s a significant trade-off. You can still use a Bell phone from 1950 if you want to, but few people are willing to make that sacrifice in other features. Or if you prefer you are welcome to securely strap a rubberized feature phone to your wrist and never worry about dropping it again. For that matter, a toy phone made out of a block of wood is much better at surviving the expected hazards of its intended environment than either of them, but it’s hardly a reasonable substitute.
- jjoonathan 9y ago> the expected hazards of their intended environment I bet if you attached a smartphone to a desk with an elastic cord it would survive a very long time.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoA car that's kept indoors and never driven can last for decades, but that doesn't mean it's an exceptionally well-made car.
- tigershark 9y agoNever had a Nokia 3310 or another mobile of the same period? Those were sturdy phones, capable of surviving a motorbike accident literally dividing in several pieces and they were working perfectly after being reassembled. Modern phones are simply ridiculous from the robustness point of view, I have seen mobiles completely shattered from a simple fall from 1 meter of height.
- selectodude 9y agoA Nokia 3310 didn't have an 8 inch piece of glass on the front of it.
- tigershark 9y agoAlso the rotary phones that the parent comment mentioned don't have it, so?
- pokemongoaway 9y agoI remember kids breaking other things using rotary phones, and then those phones still working fine. Those big hard pieces of plastic were super tough. Maybe if you dropped the base of the phone on its dial or something...
- tripzilch 9y ago> I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor. wait that's 1.80 metres, right? if you drop 10 modern smartphones from that height, making sure they hit with the corner on a stone tile floor outside, I'd be very surprised if more than one of them would show no more damage than a scratch or a dent in the side. I've seen displays shattered dropped ~30 cm by sliding from an armchair, hitting merely the side and back on stone tiles (certainly the corners are most vulnerable, no?). My phone has actually survived worse, but having witnessed the brittleness of other people's phones, I think I'm just oddly lucky.
- randallsquared 9y agoI dunno what people are doing to their phones. As a pretty clumsy person who generally hasn't used a case, the most that has ever happened (across 4 Android flagships, an N900, an iPhone 6 and now an iPhone 8) when I dropped a phone is scratching and dinging. The G1, N900, and Galaxy S2 would often disassemble themselves upon dropping, but never damaged a screen or reduced any functionality. This includes many drops (clumsy, see above) for each of those (except the iPhone 8), from heights between 0.5m and 1.5m, onto carpet, wood, tile, concrete and asphalt. I don't see many cracked screens when I'm out, but when I do, it's always in a case. I've wondered if some of these cases actually exacerbate the problem.
- Already__Taken 9y agoJust bought a Moto C. Its body is made of the slipperiest substance known to man. Only phone I've had to put a case around because I can't use it without sliding out my hand. They're leaving a lot on the table.