Is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Developing An Air Bag For Mobile Phones?

The Wall Street Journal went digging around in the patents Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has filed over the years and discovered this gem in the process…

A drawing in the application shows the system could detect when a gadget is falling and deploy before the thing smacks the ground.

“The protection system,” the patent application reads, “causes the device to be reoriented and deploys an air bag prior to contact such that the air bag first contacts the surface at impact. Instead of the cellular phone directly impacting the surface, the air bag absorbs the impact and cushions the cellular phone so that damage is reduced or substantially eliminated.”

The famously secretive Mr. Bezos acknowledged that his name is on the airbag-patent application but declined to elaborate on the air bag. “I can’t talk about the future road map, I’m sorry,” he said in an interview. “I don’t even want to say whether or not we’re working on it.”

An airbag for mobile devices?! That’s…brilliant. ThE GIF below is a pretty good representation of my response to reading that…

(HT: Pat’s Papers. GIF via Topher Chris)

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