GoKawiilWhat just happened? A phone case company dropped an iPhone out of a balloon at the edge of space, on purpose, and got it back in working condition. An iPhone 17 Pro survived a 100,418-foot fall over northern Sweden with no visible damage, giving phone case maker RhinoShield and aerospace company Sent Into Space a Guinness World Record title for the highest drop of a mobile phone in a phone case onto natural landforms.
The companies launched the phone from Kiruna, Sweden, on June 24 using a high-altitude balloon, releasing it at 30,607 meters – more than three times the typical cruising altitude of a commercial airliner. There was no parachute or protective container around the device, no heating system during the flight, and under Guinness's rules for the attempt, the case had to hit the ground before the phone itself.
The idea reportedly started as an offbeat pitch from RhinoShield founder Eric Wang, not long after the company launched its AirX line. A few concepts got floated first, including 50 consecutive 15-meter drops and a skydiving stunt, before Wang landed on the simplest version of the idea: if we're going high, let's go as high as humanly possible.
The phone fell for about 25 minutes, passing through temperatures as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius on the way down. Here's the fun physics part: falling objects don't just keep speeding up forever.
Air resistance puts a ceiling on how fast anything can fall, known as terminal velocity, and it usually kicks in long before landing. A tumbling phone probably topped out somewhere between 30 and 100 mph depending on how it was oriented, in the same range that let an iPhone walk away from an accidental 16,000-foot fall out of an Alaska Airlines jet back in 2024.
So while "100,000 feet" makes for a great headline, the phone likely wasn't hitting the ground much harder than it would from a far shorter drop, once gravity and air resistance had it out.
Finding the phone afterward took longer than the fall itself. The phone's tracker narrowed the search area to about two kilometers, but the team spent more than five hours locating it. After it was recovered, Guinness officials confirmed the iPhone could be turned on and off, make calls, and take photos. Its exterior remained intact.
The record is formally listed as the "highest drop of a mobile phone in a phone case (natural landforms)."
RhinoShield said the AirX case is made from a single recyclable material. Its design takes cues from automotive airbags and the cushioning used in athletic shoes. Before the launch, the company tested the case under freezing temperatures and changing atmospheric pressure.
The launch was as much a test of the case as it was of the phone. Once released from the balloon, the iPhone passed through the upper atmosphere before descending into denser air. It was exposed to cold temperatures and pressure changes, then landed without a planned recovery system to soften the impact.
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