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The mobile phone airbag

Crash text dummies

The mobile phone airbag
Danielle de Wolfe
14 August 2011

If you were say, the CEO of Amazon.com, chances are you'd probably be happy to rest on your laurels and spend the majority of your time on a white sand beach, ordering your degradingly clothed slaves around.

But apparently, being in charge of such a powerful company actually does something a little worrying to your psyche. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon chief executive, has come up with an invention that no-one has ever thought of. Mainly because no-one would ever deem such an invention to be remotely necessary.

Bezos has applied for a patent that would help protect your phone, if chaos struck. Tiny airbags would emerge, if the phone sensed that a fall was imminent. A radar could also be utilised to determine how far the phone was from the ground.

In fact the application is so vague that a number of possible ideas are mooted. One suggests that springs would emerge from the phone when dropped while another suggests that jets of air could alter the angle of the device mid-air.

It's a great deal of effort and suggests that Bezos must be quite the butter-fingered chap. It also suggests that being the CEO of one of the world's biggest companies isn't quite as time-consuming as you'd imagine.

You can read the full details here.

(Second image: Rex Features)