Accidents happen. Sometimes, you drop your phone for one reason or another, and when you do, your heart sinks into your stomach as you see it falling. The whole time, you hope the screen won’t crack when it hits the floor.
It’s because of moments like these (and many cracked screens) that Philip Frenzel, a 25-year-old master’s student at Aalen University in Germany, invented a smartphone case called ADcase (Active Damping Case) that acts as an ‘airbag’ and pops open to protect the device when it drops!
The “mobile airbag,” as Frenzel calls it, took him four years to design. The case detects when a phone is falling via sensors. When the sensors are activated, they trigger four springs, one at each corner of the case, to pop out and unfold in two directions. The springs are a set of eight thin metal curls. When you pick up your phone, you can push it back into the case.
The only downside is that the mobile airbag doesn’t offer 100% protection. It only works if your phone falls on an even surface. If your device falls on the corner of a curb, for example, it may still get damaged. As folks behind Supcase state, unless you own a top-of-the-range phone case like the Unicorn Beetle PRO, the damage may be substantial. Even with a decent phone case, it takes only one fall to crack your screen.
Nevertheless, Frenzel’s invention has been a grand success, winning him a top award from the German Society for Mechatronics in 2018. A patent for the case has been approved.
Prof. Rolf Biesenbach, chairman of the German Society for Mechatronics, said in an online statement about the device, said:
“In his thesis, Philip Frenzel impressively shows how a mechatronics engineer systematically and purposefully approaches a problem and develops a technically feasible and economically viable solution.”
“There are other protective cases out there, but they are bulky or cover much of the phone. That’s what’s unique about Frenzel’s mobile airbag; it’s discreet,” Frenzel added. “In short, we hope for hype.” The case is currently only available for iPhones. However, if all goes well, he plans to design more useful products like this in the future.
