If you're the clumsy sort you have absolutely no shortage of protective cases and coatings to shroud your pricey gadget in, but most are
ugly,
bulky, and
likely ineffective. The iBand from Tech21 isn't particularly attractive nor svelte, but after watching the video below there's little doubt about its effectiveness. It's made of a substance called d3o, which is a fancy orange non-Newtonian substance, starting out stretchy and gushy but, when put under pressure, hardening and protecting its precious contents. We've seen this stuff applied to high-impact applications like motorcycle armor, but we're glad to see gadgetry getting a little attention too. The video is a bit curious as it appears that the d3o is just applied around the edges of the case and yet the enclosed device survives a face-down landing, but it's an impressive demonstration nevertheless. Right now the £15 ($25) iBand is only available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but future gadgets should receive the oobleck treatment soon.
posted Aug 31st 2009 7:51AM
Saw this on the UK BBC series, Dragon's Den, last week. It's a TV show where people pitch business ideas to investors who decided whether to invest or not. Tech21 suceeded :)
They do get UK Dragons Den in the US you know, on BBC America (Tues 8/9c) as well as their own version of the den, Shark Tank (ABC Sun 8/9c).
yeah we have Dragons Den in Canada as well on CBC, might be different people (dragons) though.
This is absolutely perfect for a clutz like me. This thing is an absolute must-have if you live in a city and your iPhone is constantly in risk (as is mine) of colliding with the pavement (as it has).
Distributors in the UK charge an arm and a leg to ship to the states, but I found it on eBay for $30 shipped and snagged one ($27 with cash back). Not a bad investment.
That's brilliant!
But where's the control? I'd love to see how a Touch would fare through the same tests without a case...
I hear ya, I've seen video of two people beating the tar out of an ipod nano first gen. They dropped it from greater heights till it broke. It wouldn't. They tossed it off their 2 or three story roof onto asphalt a dozen times, threw it up in the air, drove over it and finally broke the screen by driving at higher speeds throwing it out the car window. They never did get it to stop working. Maybe this product works, but you certainly don't need the case to survive the tests they domonstrated.
Plus how fireproof is it? Enough to use for an iphone? And will it also contain the explosion if the battery blows? That would be handy in france.
I found one this morning for $25, shipped to PA. I purchased it through amazon, too.
So when it takes an impact it becomes hard, how does this protect your goods ?
Another famous non-newtonian liquid is custard !
That's what I wondered. I assume a lot of energy is absorbed in making it hard? Kinetic energy converted into thermal or chemical energy?
Drop a laptop from a few feet high on its corner: damaged laptop. Encase it in steel, then drop it: the laptop isn't damaged. That's the basic idea: the material becomes rock-solid and protects the material it encases by solidifying.
One note: hard disks aren't supposed to resist this kind of acceleration, so you can actually kill them.
The tests they show here aren't really convincing. A better test would be to take an egg, wrap some of the orange goo around it and hit it with a spade (or shoot it with a bb gun)
@ErrorKid
iPhones and iPod Touch's don't have hard drives, so I don't see how this wasn't a good demonstration.
The usefullness of this depends of the failure mechanish of device. If it comes from point damage a nonnewtonian ligquid works as it spreads the damage. But if it comes from g-forces destroying the device from inside a nonnewtonian wont work.
Its debatable if this is any better that rubber. This distributes the forces better but on the other hand pure rubber reduces g-forces more.
The problem with this stuff is it still transfers the G load of the fall into the iPhone. So the outside case of the phone won't be chipped or cracked but the internal components could be broken or cables could come loose inside the phone. Even with a case like this it still wouldn't be wise to throw your phone against the wall or drop it from a balcony.
http://www.d3o.com/products.php?section=4
d30 EGG TEST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuTsXpbLfRU&feature=related
But wouldn't you want something that actually absorbs impacts, not something that goes rigid ? The advantage of this stuff for personal protection is it's flexible until you need it to go rigid. In this case, I'm not sure it does anything more than a hard case.
Did you even watch the video?
The time that it takes to go from x velocity down to 0 is happening at the same time that the case material is changing from soft to hard so you get an energy absorbing effect as the material state hardens.
(You could almost think of it as if someone suddenly punched you in the stomach and your muscles contract and harden to take the blow more effectively)
@ avengeryarr. Yeah, I watched the video and I still stand by my original comment. This product simply can't absorb all the impact energy. Sure, you might get some energy absorption but not much IMHO. Would you jump off a 4 story building with shoes made of this stuff ? The real benefit of this stuff is it's flexibility prior to impact, that's why it's great stuff for personal protection, like elbow and knee pads.
You are absolutely right. A better case would be one that dissipates the energy of the fall. This case hardens and spreads out the force of the fall over the case but much of the G load is still transferred into the phone because the case doesn't dissipate the energy.
Knee pads work on the same principle. They spread out the force of a fall over a larger area with a hard stiff material except they also have a sponge material behind the hard material to dissipate the forces of the fall to further lesson damage to you knee. That is something this case material can't do.
I remember hearing about d3o a few years back, when they were first putting them in skiing beanies and calling them ribcaps.
From what I remember, the d3o substance will not all harden at once at the moment of impact. What happens is that the point of impact will harden the most, faster than all the other material. As you move further from the impact, the material hardens less and less, so what you get is a almost like a hard outer shell, with a softer material on the inner part, aiding the shock absorption/energy dissipation. The delocalization of the impact probably goes a long way towards preventing cracks and such.
Even though this does help with the g-forces a little bit, there's no way any case is going to protect an electronic device from every fall. There just isn't a means to slow down the impact enough. Increasing the time of impact means increasing the distance, and a case can only do that so much.
Rubbish!
This is pretty amazing technology. Maybe 4th gen iPhones will have it built in, I hate cases.
they need to make cars out of this material !!!
it's an idea, but i don't think i would want random passers-by grabbing globs of my fender to take with them...
but then when the cars hit they will just get rock hard and it could be worse. Unless i am missing something and it bounces off of itself but that is a good idea.
how did they sign jason statham as a spokesperson?
aaand that was directed at jack1701. thanks comment system.
Pet peeve and nothing more.......it's an iPod Touch, not an iTouch.
My personal litmus test for fanboyism is when someone becomes annoyed or corrects me when I toss out the term 'iTouch'. About all I can say for its proper name aside from 'who cares' is, if someone takes exception to simply truncating the iPod Touch's name, then calling it 'phoneless finger-tappy video rectangle' may very well send a fanboy into a murderous rage.
I'm an anti-fanboy and it bugs me. Really, if you want to shorten it, just call it a touch. People don't say "iNano" or "iClassic."
Looks great! Now if only it had a back to it.
So... does it prevent scratches?
who cares about when you can throw it in the wall?!
Nope, as per the video, the wall is not scratch proof.
iPhone ninja stars. I want to throw them at my wall now!
I'd like to see them drop the iPhone/iPod touch without the casing, that's a fairer test.
how do you mean fairer?
How is it a fair demonstration of a product not to use the product?
@Cy: he wants a side-by-side comparison. Yes, the gadget survives when using the case; but would it survive just as well without it?
what's an iTouch?
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/479/3003&cl=us,en
who cares!
It's ugly, therefore the science behind it is pointless.
Yes, because science is all about aesthetics.
@ nighttime - Patrick wasn't saying science was about aesthetics
'It's ugly [the consumer product, to which aesthetics are relevant], therefore the science behind it is pointless.'
However his comment doesn't really make a lot of sense since the point of science is to study the physical world so the 'science behind' things can never be pointless, that's the point.
My guess as to what he meant would be that; the product is ugly, therefore it won't sell. Since the product isn't going to sell it really isn't worth informing us, potential buyers, on how it works. But that's just a guess.
It really isn't ugly, it looks like any other silicon case that you can buy for the ipod/iphone just without the back...
Is this stuff still malleable when it is the band around the phone? As in, it clearly deforms when he chucks it against the wall. Can he then smash it back into shape, or does it eventually just wear out after some use?
It could be like a bike helmet: replace after impact. I'm not sure if he replaced the one he threw on the wall before he dropped it from the balcony.