Ah, dropping your phone.
It’s as inevitable as tripping while jogging up the subway steps or staining a brand-new pair of white pants. On particularly tough days, all three find a way to intertwine.
Here to save your blushes from at least one of them: the “active damping” case, a nifty doodad from German engineering student Philip Frenzel that auto-detects when a phone is in rapid freefall and literally springs into action, ejecting four shock-absorbing legs that brace the phone for impact.
In its distended form, the contraption sort of resembles a blue crab. The flexible metal curls — which Frenzel preferred over softer, more airbag-reminiscent materials — roll out to greet the ground, meaning the phone (no matter the angle) will never actually make contact with it. The ingenious design even won the Aalen University student an award from the German Society for Mechatronics.
We eagerly await the day this bad boy debuts on Kickstarter. Until then, watch the full video demonstration here, and stay frosty heading up those stairs.
Images: TechCrunch
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