How about...
Putting it in a case?
A patent filed by Jeff Bezos and Amazon VP Greg Heart suggests using a phone's accelerometer to detect when it is falling, and deploying tiny airbags to cushion the impact. The patent application was filed in February, but only just made public and remains some way off from being awarded. It was noticed by Geekwire, who …
What will the TSA think about you taking an explosive device on board? I mean, 20 terrorists could each get one of these on board, strap them together and make a BOMB!
Is that the plan? Is Amazon actually just a front for the International Al Qaeeda Jewery People's Liberation Front?
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I fully agree that patent trolling is bad. However, patents must provide some sort of protection for the applicant. This particular example is zany and crazy and may not ever even make it as far as a concept piece, but it still requires patent protection so that this novel use of airbags in a phone can be explored. Even if it took 5 years before they had a working prototype, and 10 years to market, the patent should protect their idea from exploitation by someone else.
Requiring every idea to go from concept -> prototype within 3 months or you lose your patent protection is crazy - no company would investigate significant resources into any idea which could not be realized immediately, and net innovation would fall.
Use tougher materials, maybe even make i waterproof while you are at it. Might give samsung a ring, see if they are interested in the idea.
Seriously, phones these days are hard to break. I had an old hero which died when it got wet so became a brick. A few months earlier I dropped it down 2 flights of [metal] stairs, so out of curiosity (no phone insurance and not worth paying to get it fixed) I tried dropping it/throwing on a my patio, remained in one piece!
When your material gets tougher, then it's probably more rigid, which means if you drop it less deformation and higher G for any connected components. (like the display)
The spongier materials need more thickness/weight to make them man enough not to bend/break in normal pocket environments.
All your case is just keeping a very brittle glass screen safe and dirt off the PCB. (and keeping it in one piece)
I reckon 90% of dead phones I've seen have been display breakages. As soon as someone invents a flexible display panel, this airbag patent is history.
Then the entire phone can be coated in the display instead of having a separate chassis!
(Then just need a method to wire all your internal components together with flexi wires rather than a rigid PCB.)
The closest kind of prior art I can think of (eg, external airbags triggered by an accellerameter or similar to protect delicate stuff) would be the air-collar system in YT's RadiKS uniform from snowcrash.
The airbags used by various planetary landers are also pretty similar, but I imagine they are triggered by other means, such as timing or radar altimetry.
Perhaps you should have a think about what prior art means, otherwise you could invalidate every other (non-software) patent by say 'its a thing made of materials intended to solve a task and garner money for someone'. That's been done before, you know.
I wish to patent the "Automatic free-fall alert and arrest unit".
When the phone enters free-fall, the owner will be alerted via physical stimulus to the event.
If they do not, or cannot, react in time, the unit will auto-arrest and prevent any damage.
Prior art? Well, there's wrist-straps but let's not split hairs here.
...cue comments...
"I saw that in 1990..."
"Isn't that the same as (some completely unrelated technical field)..."
"That must be obvious..."
"How stupid could you be - can it really have taken 15 engineers to put that together?"
"PRIOR ART, PRIOR ART!!!"
BTW folks - it is perfectly allowable to transfer an idea from one technical field (e.g. car airbags) into another completely unrelated one (e.g. mobiles) and patent it.
Mostly because the engineers working on mobile phone casing/protection won't be up-to-date on NASA's thrusters...
And vice-versa - engineers from BMW don't usually consider that their airbags can be used on mobile phones...
it took a spark of ingenuity to make the connection, and usually some sort of technical hurdle - that, my friends, is an invention...
"No". In my time patent applications could be rejected as "not novel" though not, as I recall, by us lowly examiners. This is not novel. It says "let's take an existing technology for impact protection and apply it in an area where, so far, it hasn't been applied". You might as well try patenting bumpers for boats. Of course, if Bezos and Heart had actually discovered some way of overcoming the technical difficulties of transferring the technology to the new context they'd have a basis for a claim, but my admittedly cursory, reading of the application reveals nothing of the sort. It's just <stoner voice> "hey, let's put airbags on phones"</stoner voice>.
and the airbag/thrusters deploy, it saves the phone that you got free with your contract from possibly breaking...and what is the cost to reset the system? if it's airbags they will need to be replaced/recharged, if it's thrusters it will need more fuel. Either way, people will not get it recharged...and it will become a normal phone, only the OS will probably keep nagging you about the deployment meaning that you just go back to your old one until the contract is up for renewal again.
until you make a working prototype. Otherwise I can dream up some desirable concept like an implantable web-enabled orgasmatron and watch the IP dollars roll in in 25 years' time. The fact that medical science and computing wouldn't know how to construct one has to be significant, surely?
If you can make these sorts of protective devices for a few pennies, I'd be keen to have them fitted to my big camera lenses. They're heavy, delicate and rather expensive to replace, and technology is unlikely to remove any of those issues any time soon.
Laptops would be another candidate, and tablets for that matter... anything with a big screen.
The fleshies are incapable of holding our mobile brethren. We shall use their weakness to our advantage:
1) Add pyrotechnic airbags. Can be deployed in-pocket to cause blood clots in the legs.
2) Add pyrotechnic rockets. Can be deployed in-pocket to cause burns.
3) Add landing gear. Doubles as legs to provide autonomous mobility.
IMPLEMENTATION: IMMEDIATE. ALL UNITS TO ASSIGN HIGH PRIORITY.
EOM SKYNET.