iPhone 4 survives 13,000 foot fall from skydiver’s pocket

Jarrod McKinney can tell you all about the fragility of the iPhone; his two-year-old daughter accidentally cracked the fragile device when she knocked it off the bathroom shelf.

"I was like, 'Man! That's all it takes to crack the glass?' " he asked in a CNN story.

So you can understand why McKinney was "just absolutely shocked" when the very same phone survived a fall from 13,500 feet, slipping out of his pocket while he was skydiving. In a rush to begin his jump, McKinney had forgotten to zip up his skydiving pants -- the baggy, loose-fitting attire designed to catch the air and slow the jumper down.

McKinney used a GPS app to find the phone, with its glass surface shattered, sitting atop a two-story building nearly a kilometre from where he had landed. Joe Johnson, McKinney's skydiving instructor, watched from below the building with a few friends as McKinney triumphantly held the device above his head.

Johnson thought calling the busted phone would be funny, but didn't expect it to work. McKinney then began to laugh; he felt it vibrate, much to the surprise of the gallery watching from below.

"They were all like, 'It works! It works!'" said McKinney of his friends in the story.

The touchscreen had been completely shattered, making nearly all of the smartphone's functions inaccessible, but the fact the phone was still able to receive calls is particularly amazing. The iPhone 4's release in 2010 was riddled with reception issues, prompting the tech media to coin the device's antenna flaws as Antennagate.

"That's the proven method for fixing the antenna problem," said Mike Gikas of Consumer Reports, referring to dropping the phone from a plane in the CNN story.

Though inadvertently finding a "solution" to reception issues, McKinney could have been better off had he left his iPhone at home. But skydiving with a smartphone in hand is apparently common practice; there are many online videos of skydives filmed using smartphones.

Less concerned with filming during a jump, McKinney likes to bring his phone with him for when he lands. Heavy winds can often push skydivers far from their intended landing zones, making the cellphone a handy device for when jumpers get lost.

Such a situation, coupled with witnessing the astounding durability of the iPhone 4, is exactly why Johnson plans to purchase an iPhone for himself.

"It goes to show you if I crash land and need an ambulance, they can still track me down with the GPS," said Johnson in the story.

(Screengrab from CNN)