Doing a bit of research I found a few sources that say that the terminal velocity for a generic smartphone is ~20-40mph, which isn't that much. Lots of phones survive car crashes with higher speeds than that. Add to that landing on softer soil and maybe even breaking fall with branches and I'm not shocked it survived.
No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently
First, hat tip for terminal velocity research. That is a nice addition to this discussion.
I was thinking exactly the same about the landing. If it lands in a soft place, like tall grass, most phones should be fine. Most phones are broken by falling onto hard surfaces.
~25mph assuming a Cd of 2.1 (a smooth brick is the closest I could find) a mass of 0.194Kg and a surface area of 0.01142313m^2 (75.6mm x 150.9mm).
Of course that assumes it’s falling facing its largest surface, and not tumbling or a falling edge first. Obviously that is trickier to calculate, but 20-40mph doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
Edit: it takes ~3 seconds to reach 99% terminal velocity.
putting mildly, still it's lovely to see the mix the input of imperial and metric units.
the 'fluid' density is quite wrong as well. 1.29 kg/m^3 -> almost 777 times lighter than water, it's similar to air. By its dimension iphone 15 should be around twice heavier than water.
No screen crack is pretty good though. Smartphone screens have gotten crazy good recently