Apple's iPhone credited with saving life in Manchester bombing
An iPhone 6s is being credited with saving the life of a woman who was injured in Monday's terrorist attack in Manchester, England, after the device deflected and slowed down shrapnel from the bomb blast.
Recounting the harrowing scene, the husband of Lisa Bridgett, 45, said in a Facebook post that his wife was speaking on her iPhone when Salman Abedi detonated an explosive device that sent material hurtling through the air.
A steel nut cut through Bridgett's finger and hit the bottom portion of her iPhone, which deflected the metal piece from its original path. The nut ultimately passed through Bridgett's cheek before coming to rest in her nose.
As seen in photos provided on Facebook, the nut appears to have torn through the iPhone's aluminum chassis, loudspeaker, logic board and display assembly. Whether the components actually changed the metal piece's trajectory is up for debate, though iPhone 6s was designed to be more robust than its predecessor.
Following the so-called "bendgate" controversy, which criticized iPhone 6 Plus for being easily deformed during normal use, Apple turned to stronger 7000 series aluminum with iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. The material was initially deployed in the original Apple Watch Sport and is now used to build both Apple Watch and iPhone 7 products.
Bridgett, who was at the Manchester Arena to pick up her daughter and her daughter's friend from that night's Ariana Grande concert, was subjected to multiple injuries from the bomb blast. Aside from the severed finger and face wounds, she suffered a thigh wound, fractured ankle and minor scrapes and bruises.
On Facebook, Steve Bridgett said his wife "is in a positive mood and feels very lucky to be alive" following the incident. He elaborated on his comments in an interview with The Guardian.
"The fact that she was on the phone at the time probably saved her life," Bridgett said. "The nut has hit her phone, which has more than likely not only diverted it but also slowed it down considerably."
He went on to thank local police, first responders and hospital workers for their rapid effort in dealing with the attack that left 22 people dead and another 64 injured.
The Manchester incident is not the first time an Apple product has been credited with saving a life. Earlier this year, a MacBook Pro took a stray bullet during a deadly shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida, likely protecting its owner from grave harm.
Recounting the harrowing scene, the husband of Lisa Bridgett, 45, said in a Facebook post that his wife was speaking on her iPhone when Salman Abedi detonated an explosive device that sent material hurtling through the air.
A steel nut cut through Bridgett's finger and hit the bottom portion of her iPhone, which deflected the metal piece from its original path. The nut ultimately passed through Bridgett's cheek before coming to rest in her nose.
As seen in photos provided on Facebook, the nut appears to have torn through the iPhone's aluminum chassis, loudspeaker, logic board and display assembly. Whether the components actually changed the metal piece's trajectory is up for debate, though iPhone 6s was designed to be more robust than its predecessor.
Following the so-called "bendgate" controversy, which criticized iPhone 6 Plus for being easily deformed during normal use, Apple turned to stronger 7000 series aluminum with iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. The material was initially deployed in the original Apple Watch Sport and is now used to build both Apple Watch and iPhone 7 products.
Bridgett, who was at the Manchester Arena to pick up her daughter and her daughter's friend from that night's Ariana Grande concert, was subjected to multiple injuries from the bomb blast. Aside from the severed finger and face wounds, she suffered a thigh wound, fractured ankle and minor scrapes and bruises.
On Facebook, Steve Bridgett said his wife "is in a positive mood and feels very lucky to be alive" following the incident. He elaborated on his comments in an interview with The Guardian.
"The fact that she was on the phone at the time probably saved her life," Bridgett said. "The nut has hit her phone, which has more than likely not only diverted it but also slowed it down considerably."
He went on to thank local police, first responders and hospital workers for their rapid effort in dealing with the attack that left 22 people dead and another 64 injured.
The Manchester incident is not the first time an Apple product has been credited with saving a life. Earlier this year, a MacBook Pro took a stray bullet during a deadly shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida, likely protecting its owner from grave harm.
Comments
Samsung needs to figure out how to sell original note 7s to these monsters.....the problem would slowly take care of itself.
One final note: what if facial recognition becomes the primary way to unlock phones in the future. Image: terrorist ties iPhone to bomb as detonator. Apple hacks it and next time they login with recognition Apple has it detonate because their face was on a watch list!
And this is just the survivor. Imagine the state of the people who didn't make it.
Words can't describe how twisted and warped someone's thoughts must be. All in the name of "jihad".
A decade ago we saw stories about the iPod stopping bullets, and there are countless non-Apple products that have serendipitously stopped, deflected, and/or reduced the energy of a projectile. Even books can do the trick when placed behind glass if the projectional fragments upon impact. So why is this a story? Why is 7000 series aluminium a big deal? Harder metals don't necessarily means they're better at stopping a high-speed projectile, and then you have to thickness of the material and the other materials in the device that can help absorb the energy. Kevlar, for example, would be ineffective if it was hard. This case clearly indicates that an angle of incident was involved which would reduce energy, which is clearly the most important factor in her being saved, which means this could've happen with countless other objects, too.
Say what you want about Gadaffi and Saddam (Assad too, if we left him to it) but they kept these nutters in check. This guy in Manchester, his family sought refuge (and was granted!) in the UK after Gadaffi issued an arrest warrant for the father - and this is how they repay our hospitality.
All AI are doing is reporting the information.
Attempting to draw a parallel between a thoughtless person's action and a heinous act of an assassin, a mass murderer, and reducing it to 'certainly far worse' is itself thoughtless and insensitive.
'The same heart'... A line jumper and suicide bomber/mass murderer are the same except for their actions. So what. What utter bullshit.
That may be. He may not have been trying to promote the iPhone itself, but to gain as much solace and relief as possible from a devastating and painful situation.
His sister did survive, but does and will suffer pain, both physical and physiological, for quite some time.
He's possibly trying to make the best out of a horrific situation, realizing that he may have almost lost his sister, while others lost friends and family.
AI's use of this as a story may indeed be questionable journalism or not even real journalism at all. But tech sites aren't where I go for world new and journalistic integrity.
On a less humanitarian note, I wonder what part, if any, did the change in alloys play so I don't take particular offense to this article, though I think it could have been writing with more sensitivity.