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N.C. man’s iPhone survives 1000 foot drop

N.C. man’s iPhone survives 1000 foot drop

What could be more amazing than an iPhone surviving a drop of 1,000 feet? Finding it.

Cruising 1,000 feet above rural North Carolina on March 16, it was another day at the office for Air Force Staff Sgt. Ron Walker, but then something terrible happened. He lost his iPhone.

While spotting landmarks to verify position, Walker leaned out of the C-130 cruising along at 130 knots, nearly 150 mph. His iPhone 4, stowed in a pocket with a Velcro flap sailed away in the turbulent air.

“It took a minute to realize it was gone,” said Walker, who lives near Sanford.

With just a mediocre wireless EDGE signal, a colleague downloaded Apple’s Find My iPhone app on another iPhone and discovered the lost device worked well enough to at least be tracked. Credit Walker for having already installed the app on his iPhone. At this point he was just hoping to be able to recover data from the phone to transfer to a replacement.

The search led them to a wooded area between U.S. 1 and Broadacres Lake. On ATVs, the party set to retrieve the iPhone.

Find My iPhone can locate an iPhone or iPad using wireless or GPS signals and in this case it located the device with pinpoint accuracy on the map and satellite image. Users can send a message to the missing device and even command it to play an audible alarm to assist in finding it. For security, the app can also lock or even wipe a device of its data.

It fell next to tree just as indicated by the app. Amazingly, the iPhone survived undamaged. “It looked like someone had sat the phone down and walked away,” said Walker.

Though an Apple fan, Walker credits its survival not so much to build quality of the iPhone or to the Griffin case on the device. The fall was likely broken by branches of the pine tree and then landed on the pine needle covered ground. Still it could have just as easily landed on a road, log, or in the nearby water.

Walker first shared his experience with TUAW and since then story has gone viral.

It may not have a parachute, but Walker is getting a new case courtesy of Otterbox.

[Thanks: http://blogs.newsobserver.com]

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