On 24 June 2026, a smartphone was dropped from the stratosphere over the Swedish city of Kiruna. The height was 30 607 meters. The device, in an AirX case from RHINOSHIELD, free-fell for about 25 minutes and landed in the wilderness.
After the fall, the phone was found intact. It turned on and worked. Calls and photos were possible, with no visible damage to the body. Guinness World Records officially confirmed the record: the highest fall of a smartphone in a case onto natural terrain.
The experiment was conducted by RHINOSHIELD together with the British company Sent Into Space. The smartphone was lifted on a high-altitude balloon from the Esrange Space Center, then remotely detached. There was no parachute — Guinness rules required direct contact of the case with the ground.
The conditions were harsh: temperatures down to minus 60 degrees, pressure about one percent of Earth's. The AirX case, made from a single recyclable material, absorbed and dissipated impact energy. The company had previously conducted tests in cold and low pressure.
The hardest part was the search. The tracker narrowed the area to two kilometers, but the team spent more than five hours finding the device in the Swedish backwoods. The record was confirmed by Guinness judge Juliet Dawson.
This is, of course, an impressive demonstration. But does such a test say anything about how well the case will protect a phone in everyday life?
For RHINOSHIELD, the experiment was a way to showcase the capabilities of AirX. The company's founder, Eric Van, challenged the team to test the limits of the case. The result exceeded expectations and brought an official title.
A fall from such a height is a rare case where marketing and a real test coincided. The smartphone survived, the record stands, and the question of practical benefit remains open.
