– [Joanna] So what happens when you drop an iPhone 14 from 300 feet? Release, oh my gosh, it's
falling, it's falling. No, no, no, don't hit
that, don't hit that. Alright, here it is, the moment of truth. We'll get to what happened. But first, remember when… – That Alaska Airlines flight, that lost part of a door plug, a piece of the plane
coming off at 16,000 feet? – Well, along with that door, out flew a passenger's iPhone, and it was found on the side
of the road, perfectly fine.
How is that possible? Was it the case, improved
phone durability, a miracle? There was only one thing to do, get a bunch of iPhone 14s
and Samsung Galaxy S23s. they're all powered on, and load them up in our very own phone-dropping drone,
trademark not registered. (drone buzzing)
(dramatic music) Safety first. The first set of tests were all done over grass, at New Jersey's Sussex County fairgrounds, and yes, I used iPhone
14s and Galaxy S23s. They're not the latest models, but they represent the
latest durability claims by Apple and Samsung. I dropped each phone, naked,
no case from three feet, 30 feet, and 300 feet. The first.
(phone thudding) That's it. Next, we fired up the
phone-dropping drone, with this contraption built by
my hero producer, David Hall. It releases the phone from this pouch when he activates the landing lights. So he flew up to 30 feet, and release. (drone buzzing) (dramatic music)
(wind gusting) iPhone, in perfectly good shape, other than some grass stains.
The same thing for the Samsung at 30 feet. (wind gusting)
(phone thudding) Camera's still on, and
not even a grass stain. Finally, we went on up. iPhone 14, 300 feet onto grass. (dramatic music)
(wind gusting) (phone thudding) Where is it?
(dramatic music) Ah, it's fine. Yep, it's just some dirt in
the crevice of the camera. No screen crack, landed on
some pretty firm ground here. This is definitely not light grass. And again, same thing for
the Galaxy S23 at 300 feet. It's coming down, it's coming down. There it is, in a nice little
tuft of grass right here. I was amazed it didn't
break from that high up, but what happens when it
lands on something harder? So I repeated all those tests on asphalt.
Release.
(phone thudding) Yep, there's a dent in
the corner on the edge, but the screen is fine. (dramatic music)
(phone thudding) Similar, just nicks in the corner. So up to 30 feet we went. Thoughts and prayers prayers, iPhone. (drone buzzing)
(dramatic music) (phone thudding)
Ah! Holy crap, the screen is fine. The back glass cracked, and also the camera's
kind of nicked there. And then we did the same with the… Bye-bye Samsung, it was nice knowing you.
Oh boy, oh!
(phone thudding) I got my gloves on for this one. Crack in the front top left of the screen. crack in the bottom right of the screen. Time to make the case for a case. – [David] Boo! – Sorry, everyone. Yeah, when I did that same 30-foot drop with an OtterBox Defender
Case on a new iPhone 14, the phone is good, case just kind of came off there a little bit. And a new Galaxy S23. (phone thudding) Oh, that didn't sound good. Ah, it's okay. Everything was totally fine. The case does a lot of
what the grass does, it absorbs the impact, and allows for a slower
deceleration of the fall.
It also helps with… – So if you hit your phone on the corner, it's gonna have a very small contact area and more likely to break. If you hit it on the flat surface, the contact area would be larger. – But not even an OtterBox Defender Case, could help When dropping
from 300 feet onto asphalt. (dramatic music)
(wind gusting) (phone thudding)
That hit pretty hard. Oh man, the screen's fine, totally fine. The glass covering the
camera, completely shattered, but actually, the camera still works. Sad days for Samsung too. There it goes, which seemed to land
directly on its right corner, and bounce a second time on the surface. Oh! Oh man, the case is cracked. The phone just won't turn on. It's definitely bent here. It's a bendable phone, but yet, it doesn't work anymore. Okay, so we prove that landing on grass is your best bet.
But you're probably thinking, "That isn't actually a phone falling out of a plane at 16,000 feet?" Except, well, it's sort of the same. – Here's the dirty trick, it doesn't matter if you do it from space or about 300 feet up, it's the same result, because of something
called terminal velocity. – [Joanna] Yes, I called up Mark Rober, a former NASA Mechanical
Engineer, turned YouTuber, who has successfully
dropped an egg from space. – Let's say, when you drop that phone, at first, gravity's
pulling it down from force, and it's going faster and faster, but there's another
force that opposes that, and that's what we call drag.
So at some point, what
happens is you go fast enough, that the force of
gravity pulling you down, equals the force of that drag. It's like a tug-of-war that's now tied. And at that point, because it's tied, you just keep going at that same speed. – [Joanna] And I got some help calculating the actual terminal
velocity of a smartphone. – I got 27 meters per second, which is about 60 miles
per hour for a phone. – So what did we learn from
dropping all these phones today? Physics is cool.
Yes, phones have gotten more durable too. Even 30-foot drops onto asphalt, (phone thudding)
didn't destroy these phones. But yeah, if you happen to drop your phone out of an airplane, make sure it lands on grass, Just get a case, really,
it's the end of the video..