iPhone battery shock resistance

[ced89]

Hello,
does anyone know the shock resistance of the solid state battery of the iPhone? (soon I'll have also an Apple Watch)
I do downhill and other similar sports, the shocks that it takes are quite high.
Obviously the phone is fully protected by a soft padding all around.

This is the reason why I paid the Apple care , almost 200 pounds...
I would be very concerned also for the Apple Watch, even though in that case it's more about a potential crash than a simple shock...

 

[chscag]

There are various drop tests and shock resistant test results that are available on the net. The tests vary and most of them are done under stable conditions. You can use your favorite search engine to seek them out.

Also Apple publishes the same information that can be found on their site.

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[pigoo3]

does anyone know the shock resistance of the solid state battery of the iPhone? (soon I'll have also an Apple Watch)

In terms of shock resistance...pretty sure something other than the battery will fail first due to shocks before the battery. Maybe a better data point to get the answer to is...how shock resistant is the iPhone overall (or Apple Watch)...not just the battery.

Nick

 

[ced89]

Thank you both.

Every shock test I found is actually a crash/drop test, basically not what I wanted, that is an accelleration/break test.
I don't think that it can fail due to this so easily, not with a bicycle kind of accident at least...

 

[MacInWin]

Well, a drop test is an acceleration test. I don't know what you mean by "break" test. But the drop test is a drop, followed by high deceleration when it hits the end of the drop. You mentioned skiing, but acceleration for skiing is not that high. Deceleration can be, if you hit something, pretty high, but probably not like a 6 foot drop test onto a hard surface. Now, if the iPhone was between you and the tree...

 

[ced89]

Well, a drop test is an acceleration test. I don't know what you mean by "break" test. But the drop test is a drop, followed by high deceleration when it hits the end of the drop. You mentioned skiing, but acceleration for skiing is not that high. Deceleration can be, if you hit something, pretty high, but probably not like a 6 foot drop test onto a hard surface. Now, if the iPhone was between you and the tree...

The tests I've seen endeed with a crash, they weren't proper accelleration/decelleration tests...
So, for MX like activities, is it risky to bring the iPhone with you? Excluding crashes, just AC/DC

 

[MacInWin]

I don't know what you define as "proper" acceleration/deceleration testing. Unless you can achieve 5-20 thousand Gs acceleration/deceleration, there is little that you can survive that will break an iPhone unless the iPhone experiences bending forces (being jammed at high speed against a tree with sufficient force that it seriously injures you may break the phone, for example). But just normal human activity cannot generate sufficient acceleration/deceleration to harm the device. I've had an iPhone in my pocket on a roller coaster that reached several G's and it survived just fine.

Maybe if you described what you are really worried about we can get more specific? You mentioned downhill and similar sports, whatever that is. Downhill skiers will not accelerate nor decelerate sufficiently fast to break an iPhone, unless, as I said, you ski into a tree or building or some other obstacle that brings you to a sudden halt. And if you do ski into such a situation, you probably won't survive any sudden stop that can, on deceleration alone, break an iPhone. But if you get the iPhone in a bending situation, like having it in a pocket and hitting a tree in the middle of the iPhone, it will break by bending, but so will you.

 

[ced89]

I don't know what you define as "proper" acceleration/deceleration testing. Unless you can achieve 5-20 thousand Gs acceleration/deceleration, there is little that you can survive that will break an iPhone unless the iPhone experiences bending forces (being jammed at high speed against a tree with sufficient force that it seriously injures you may break the phone, for example). But just normal human activity cannot generate sufficient acceleration/deceleration to harm the device. I've had an iPhone in my pocket on a roller coaster that reached several G's and it survived just fine.

Maybe if you described what you are really worried about we can get more specific? You mentioned downhill and similar sports, whatever that is. Downhill skiers will not accelerate nor decelerate sufficiently fast to break an iPhone, unless, as I said, you ski into a tree or building or some other obstacle that brings you to a sudden halt. And if you do ski into such a situation, you probably won't survive any sudden stop that can, on deceleration alone, break an iPhone. But if you get the iPhone in a bending situation, like having it in a pocket and hitting a tree in the middle of the iPhone, it will break by bending, but so will you.

I think that I didn't explain well the situation.

Suppose that my iPhone is protected enough to resist at a certain decellerataion (not from a crash point of view).
How much the iPhone can resist?

I don't want to consider a crash because at high speed, whatever crash will break the iPhone, we both know that, so I wish to know at what decelleration the iPhone can still survive.
Do you have any value?

 

[MacInWin]

No, I don't think there is any low-G testing for devices. They do drop testing, which generates 1000's of Gs at impact, but that is more for screen shattering and general stability. The battery is glued in the phone, the rest of the parts are held in by screws, so I would suspect that 10-20 Gs for a short time would not cause any damage. But as I said, I don't think they do low-G testing for that. You still haven't explained exactly what you are talking about but I suspect that, outside of catching a corner on something hard that shatters the glass, a full-on crash by even a professional downhill skier running 130 kph, or 80 mph would cause the iPhone to come apart.

If by "downhill" you mean cycling, I would think the greater risk of carrying an iPhone would be that it would be impaled or struck by the bike, the rocks, trees, or even the rider, and the bending force would shatter the screen and maybe even break the internals. As I said, it's not the deceleration, it is the deformation that is the big risk. An  Watch would probably survive better, as long as the band kept it on the wrist, but that has its own risks because if you snagged that band on something in the middle of the crash, it could injure your arm/shoulder pretty badly. Again, a direct impact by anything on the Watch face could crack the screen or even impale the watch, but at that level impact, if the Watch were not there, that impalement would be in your arm, which is not a good thing.

If it were me, I would look at a good protective case, like those from Otterbox, for example, if I were to take the iPhone into that kind of environment. Apple Cases