You’ve got to give Nicholas King, Colin Ely and Fletcher Rothkopf credit for thinking outside the box.
In a patent filed last year and granted Tuesday, the three Apple engineers offer five ways to protect a falling iPhone:
- Internal mechanisms for moving the center of mass, cat-like, in midair
- A battery ejector to alter the flight path in freefall
- Springs and air foils that pop out just before impact
- Grippers that lock onto the earphone or power cord when the phone starts to fall
- Pressurized gas canisters to counter the force of gravity
Will any of these mechanisms see the light day? Who knows. Apple is famous for patenting every idea it has — good and bad.
Link: Protecting an electronic device.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.