We’ve already seen a teardown of the elusive Gold iPhone 5S earlier today, although the release of a major handset wouldn’t be complete until we’ve seen it abused by performing a number of drop tests to see how they fair against those with extremely buttery fingers. Both the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are officially releasing today, and what better way to mark the occasion than by dropping the hell out of them? (more…)
Clad in a plastic back, the iPhone 5C might be cheaper, but is it more durable than the 5S? Obviously, the only way to find out is by dropping the new phones.
The worst drop any of your gadgets are likely to suffer is a couple of feet. Maybe a little more if you’re dangling one over the edge of a balcony or drop it down the stairs or something. But gadgets, no matter how robust, aren’t build to handle more than that. That’s why this 65-foot drop test is insane and frankly unfair (if you take it seriously, anyway). It’s also kind of awesome. More »
The iPhone 5 looks to be sturdier than its delicate baby glass predecessor, but all of these drop tests are dodging one crucial question: can the Knicks’ 6-foot-5 point guard use it as a basketball? More »
You might be longing to fondle your new iPhone 5 lovingly, but there are people out there who just want to break them—as a public service, of course. The first iPhone 5 drop tests are starting to come in, and as painful as they may be to watch, the new iPhone holds up remarkably well against punishment, notably better than its predecessor. More »
NASA has always used the desert as its own personal playground, and we’d imagine that its team had a blast in Arizona yesterday, as a mock parachute compartment of the Orion spacecraft was dropped from 25,000 feet above Earth. The dart-shaped object experienced free fall for 5,000 feet, at which point, drogue chutes were deployed at 20,000 feet. This was then followed by pilot chutes, which then activated the main chutes. As you’d imagine, these things are monsters: the main parachutes — three in all — each measure 116 feet wide and weigh more than 300 pounds. Better yet, the mission was successful.
Naturally, all of this is in preparation for Orion’s first test flight — currently scheduled for 2014 — where the unmanned craft will travel 15 times further than the ISS and jam through space at 20,000 mph before returning to Earth. Yesterday’s outing is merely one in a series of drop tests, and yes, it’s important to remove any unknowns from the situation: eventually, humans will be along for the ride.
The Samsung Galaxy S III continues to be one of the hottest Android phones we’ve ever seen. When I reviewed the phone, I said flat out that this is the phone you’ve been waiting for. And after John and I got another good look during an episode of Fly Or Die, we both gave the Galaxy S III a Fly. But one thing we haven’t really addressed is durability, which is why we thought you might want to take a look at this drop test by Gizmo Slip.
Spoiler Alert: I’ll now be talking about the results of the video, so jump past the break if you want to watch before reading.
There isn’t a whole lot of good news to share after watching this drop test go down. The Galaxy S III almost survived unscathed from the first drop, a four-foot fall on its back. Unfortunately, the glass of the camera cracked as the 8-megapixel rear camera tends to jut out the phone a bit.
The second fall, however, is where things really start to devolve. A corner drop from four feet totally destroyed the corner of the phone and sent a crack all the way from the bottom right corner of the phone to the top left corner of the screen. “For funsies,” Gizmo Slip dropped the phone one more time from four feet on its face. That didn’t actually cause much damage, except for a little more scratching on the corner.
I said it before and I’ll say it again: a phone of this caliber shouldn’t be made of plastic. It was my one big complaint when the Galaxy S III was released, though I’m sure there are reasons for a plastic paneling. Either way, however, the plastic didn’t do much to protect the beastly phone, so if you’re a new or future owner, be sure to pick yourself up a case and be careful.
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