The question of the day:
Will dropping an iPhone affect its performance?
Many things can happen to your iPhone when you drop it. Other than a cracked screen, your iPhone may experience performance issues as well!
However, this depends on a few factors, such as the impact force and the collision area. Other factors include your iPhone’s age and current physical status as well.
If you have dropped your phone a few times before, the phone might experience gradual hardware damage that will eventually manifest in non-performance and malfunction.
The drop’s impact may also determine the extent of damage that your phone will suffer.
A short fall may not affect performance, while a fall from a high place onto a hard surface with significant impact will likely have more serious consequences.
Do you want to know more about how dropping an iPhone affects its performance? Read on and find out what damage may be caused, and what to do if this happens to you!
What Happens When You Drop Your Phone For The First Time?
Different scenarios can occur when you drop your iPhone for the first time. There is no guarantee of harm- or lack thereof!
There are certainly situations where a first-time drop can severely damage an iPhone and cause serious malfunction.
On the other hand, it’s also quite common for an iPhone to be dropped several times but escape unscathed each time.
As mentioned earlier, certain factors will determine the extent of damage that occurs when you drop your iPhone.
For instance, if you drop your iPhone for the first time on a cushioned surface with relatively soft impact, your phone may not experience any damage at all.
However, if you drop your iPhone for the first time on a hard or rocky surface, you will most likely cause external damage to your phone, and you may start experiencing internal performance issues as well!
A tremendous amount of pressure is exerted between your iPhone and a solid, unforgiving surface.
As a result, the impact may crack or break your phone’s screen (especially when no screen protector is installed). This can result in other issues as well such as dead pixels, or a pink tint.
Moreover, the drop could further damage other parts of the phone, such as critical components like the logic board.
In contrast, when your iPhone drops on soft surfaces such as a mattress, the padding sort of molds itself around the phone.
It also builds a larger surface area around the iPhone, reducing the overall pressure. As a result, your iPhone will probably sustain little to no damage!
Some other factors can also influence the condition of your iPhone after it drops.
The phone’s design is one important aspect. If your phone’s exterior is primarily glass, it will suffer more damage than those with plastic exteriors.
Additionally, if you have protective layers around your phone such as a screen protector and silicone case, your phone will be protected even further from harm.
All in all, a first-time drop probably won’t incur severe damage to your phone. Multiple drops, however, will likely cause serious problems over time.
Does Dropping Your Phone Damage The Inside?
After being dropped, your iPhone might still look completely unscathed on the outside.
However, it’s quite possible that it might have suffered some significant internal damage!
If you happen to drop your iPhone, check for any visible damage such as a cracked screen, displaced buttons, chipped camera lenses, and so on.
After ensuring that there is no visible harm, the next thing to look for is internal damage.
A high-impact drop can damage internal components, with the most susceptible being the logic board.
The logic board is the ‘mother’ of all of your iPhone’s functions and has interconnected cables that coordinate different iPhone features for smooth functioning.
When your phone experiences hard impacts, these cables might disconnect- subsequently causing your phone to malfunction.
Furthermore, the battery and other connections such as the charging system, Wi-Fi drivers, and earphone jack might also suffer damage and stop working.
If you notice that your phone is slower, shuts down randomly even with a full charge, cannot connect to the internet, or frequently freezes after dropping, it’s a pretty good sign that some sort of damage has occurred.
Does Dropping Your Phone Make It Slower?
Your iPhone may start running more slowly after being dropped due to internal damage, or even a malfunctioning touch screen.
However, generally speaking, dropping your phone will not necessarily make it slower.
It’s a bit of a crapshoot: An iPhone may drop multiple times and still be completely fine- or it might shatter and spill its insides all over the floor. Who knows for sure?
Your iPhone may become slower after being dropped if it sustains mild damage to its internal structure.
An iPhone’s interior consists of refined, delicate, and complicated circuitry. This structure makes it quite susceptible to fracture. For this reason, a phone is designed to protect internal systems.
However, it’s inevitable that damage can still occur. Upon impact, a slower phone is most likely a result of minute fractures in the logic board.
Furthermore, dropping your phone may ruin its cooling capabilities. As a result, the phone may heat up more and run more slowly.
Does Dropping Your iPhone Affect The Camera?
Changes to your iPhone camera experience can also occur when you drop your device.
When you drop your iPhone, the glass that covers the lens may crack, and the actual camera hardware itself may also be affected.
According to Apple Support, high amplitude vibration can degrade your iPhone’s camera.
Multiple high-impact drops can also reduce the performance of the anti-vibration sensor in the component.
Some iPhone cameras’ gyroscope and optical image stabilization (OIS) can also become less effective when the device has been mishandled over and over.
If the gyroscope and OIS performance reduce, shots taken in motion will then appear somewhat blurred.
Many accidental drops add up over time, and can negatively impact the function of the closed-loop auto-focus in certain iPhone models.
This closed-loop auto-focus serves as an anti-gravity and anti-vibration sensor in the phone, allowing for clear-cut focus in a shot.
In addition, connective wires between your device and camera can also be affected- potentially causing the camera to stop working entirely!
Finally, high-impact drops may also affect the camera’s internal circuit (IC) chip. The camera’s IC chip protects the camera from damage caused by overcharging and short circuiting.
As such, the camera may stop functioning entirely if the IC chip is harmed in any way. Only a black screen will greet you each time you try to take a photo.
Despite all this doom and gloom talk, iPhone cameras are actually engineered in a way that protects it from impact so that the camera and its functions are protected as much as possible!
What Height Do You Need To Drop A Modern Smartphone From Before It Stops Working?
The fall’s height matters less than what a phone is dropped on when it comes to damage that might be incurred.
There have been records of smartphones surviving after being dropped from heights of up to 103,000 feet (YES, REALLY).
On the other hand, you can drop a smartphone from a height of just a few inches and suffer significant damage to the screen and internal components.
The impact and pressure exacted by the drop are both essential factors that come into play when it comes to potential damage.
Through a series of drop tests, experts observed that certain factors largely determined whether a drop will damage a phone or not.
The identified factors included the impact angle, as well as the surface of impact.
Dropping your smartphone onto a smooth, polished, and waxed wooden surface makes it more likely to survive than when it’s dropped onto a rough concrete surface of the same height.
The surface involved in the fall is the major determinant factor in this case.
In the same vein, a phone that fell flat on either the back or front surfaces is more likely to survive a drop than one that fell straight on its edges from the same height. The factors that come into play here are the pressure and angle of the drop.
To explain it further: A smartphone that drops onto flat ground allows the pressure from the drop to spread across the device’s surface. This distribution of pressure across the surface reduces the overall impact.
However, note that with all things being equal- the higher the height of fall, the greater the impact will be.
A phone dropping from a height of 100 feet is more likely to sustain damage than one falling from a height of 10 feet on the same surface and at the same angle. That’s just logical!
What to Do When Your Phone Falls On The Floor
If you happen to drop your phone on the floor, here are some essential things you should do immediately:
Check for External Damage
After dropping your phone, check it immediately for any external damage.
Look to see if the touchscreen has cracked or shattered, as that is the most common form of damage sustained by smartphones after impact.
Next, inspect the phone volume and power off buttons to ensure they are not out of place. Then, try them out to ensure they function correctly and aren’t stuck or unresponsive!
Finally, check the headphone jack and charging ports closely to ensure that there was no distortion after the fall.
Check For Internal Damage
Whether there is evidence of external damage to your phone or not, it’s essential to test your phone for any internal damage as well.
The first function to check is the speaker.
Play some music or have someone call you to confirm that the speakers have not been affected.
If you cannot hear the caller or music well, make a note of the problem and proceed to further troubleshooting below.
The next thing to check is the camera.
If you can spot external damage like a cracked screen or lens, photos taken from your phone camera may now be distorted.
However, if you attempt to take a photo and the display is black from the outset, then there is likely an internal issue with the camera. These issues could be with the IC chip or connective cables.
It’s also beneficial to run a few applications on your phone to check for internal damage.
If you run an app and your phone becomes slow or lags in any way (like your Google Maps being stuck on “Finding the Best Route”), the impact may have negatively affected the logic board.
Some apps may even stop working altogether!
Furthermore, even without running an app, you can tell if your phone has internal damage if it freezes or shuts down abruptly.
Finally, another tell-tale sign of internal damage is overheating.
If your phone feels hot to the touch after a fall without charging it or exposing it to any heat, it can be a sign that internal cooling systems have become compromised.
Take It To A Smartphone Repair Specialist
If you experience any deterioration in your user experience after you drop your phone- whether due to internal or external causes- you should make it a point to visit a smartphone repair specialist or nearest Apple Store ASAP.
The specialist will be able to take apart your phone as necessary and detect other damage that occurred which you might have missed.
Though it’s tempting to save the money, it’s not recommended to look up repair methods online to attempt to fix things yourself if you are inexperienced in this field!
You could end up doing more harm than good- and void your warranty as well while you’re at it.
Even if you don’t experience any obvious signs of internal or external damage after dropping your phone, you can still take it to a phone technician for more thorough analysis.
This can be very beneficial as some components within the device may loosen after it has been dropped.
Over time, as you move around with your phone, the damage can worsen- resulting in a more significant problem manifesting weeks or even months later after the incident!
A skilled phone technician will be able to tell you whether the drop’s impact affected your phone in any way, or if you truly got lucky.
In Conclusion
The majority of people who own iPhones (or any smartphone in general) have dropped their device at some point in time.
It doesn’t get much more devastating than realizing your previously pristine phone screen has been cracked after hitting the ground!
(Though, it’s arguably even worse when your phone completely malfunctions and you cannot seem to pinpoint what the problem might be.)
As discussed in this article, certain factors determine the potential extent of damage that occurs whenever you drop your iPhone.
The most notable aspects are impact and surface. The higher the impact, the more serious the damage. Similarly, the more rough and hard a surface is, the more damage your phone will incur.
Height surprisingly does not play that significant a role when it comes to damaging your phone.
Instead, the angle at which your phone hits the ground and the surface itself will have a greater influence on how much damage is suffered.
Since dropping an iPhone will affect its performance, it’s always best to visit a phone repair specialist to diagnose your phone afterwards.
Even if you do not see any visible damage, it’s always better to be safe than sorry!