How sensitive are phones to prolonged shaking?

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I've seen this video a few days ago: 

At 7:30 she explains why you shouldn't be shaking your phone as it might damage some sensors. Now I've been using my phone during workouts. I was a distance runner first, then I transitioned to cycling. So my phone is either in my pocket or on a mount. On the mount, it's of course very exposed to vibrations so I'd like to know how safe it is for the phone. Any thoughts?

[Hinjima]

15 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Hi,

 

I've seen this video a few days ago: 

At 7:30 she explains why you shouldn't be shaking your phone as it might damage some sensors. Now I've been using my phone during workouts. I was a distance runner first, then I transitioned to cycling. So my phone is either in my pocket or on a mount. On the mount, it's of course very exposed to vibrations so I'd like to know how safe it is for the phone. Any thoughts?

Its not something I would worry about.

I'v been working out for 20 years and I run, cycle and lift weights..

My phones have gone through hell, I throw them everywhere!  I have yet to see a phone fail.

I also ride motorcycles and I have my phone in my pocket every day I ride.

I do a lot of trail riding and mountaing biking as well and I listen to music constantly, no problemo  

 

Phones are durability tested during production. They can take it.

[Needfuldoer]

I've heard of hard handlebar mounts causing damage to phone cameras, since the vibration can dislodge the moving lenses inside them. (Especially with hard mounts on motorcycle handlebars, which vibrate from the engine running.) 

 

I haven't heard of anyone damaging their phone by running with it, unless of course they drop it.

[Millios]

15 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Hi,

 

I've seen this video a few days ago: 

At 7:30 she explains why you shouldn't be shaking your phone as it might damage some sensors. Now I've been using my phone during workouts. I was a distance runner first, then I transitioned to cycling. So my phone is either in my pocket or on a mount. On the mount, it's of course very exposed to vibrations so I'd like to know how safe it is for the phone. Any thoughts?

What I'll say is purely from personal experience

 

Its not about how much you shake it, I run daily, bike, work out and during work.

 

Phones had nothing wrong with the sensors that I could 100% pin on shaking. For example after a few years the sensor for fingerprints took a tad longer or 1-2 tries more but with not flagship phones its expected

 

Its how hard it gets shaken or obviously thrown/mistreated

The only phones I've notice deteriorate faster are those I was irresponsible with. I am also fairly clumpsy so i drop them, drop stuff on them, accidentally thrown them, dunked on them with baskeballs etc etc

And even then they were marginally worse than the more well-taken-care-of ones, noticably but not by much

[OhioYJ]

Actually...  So I ride with mine in my pocket all the time on my motorcycles (no issues). I was thinking about getting a handlebar mount, until I was researching different mounts. One of the bikes I have is a supermoto which tends to have quite a bit of vibrations, and many in those threads talked about various hardware failures they contributed to being vibrated from mounted to the bars. 

 

I know my AFR gauge on my supermoto is from company that does flat salt racing and it's solidly mounting and it vibrates like it's in a paint shaker while riding. I really need to add a rubber bushing to it. 

[Millios]

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Actually...  So I ride with mine in my pocket all the time on my motorcycles. I was thinking about getting a handlebar mount, until I was researching different mounts. One of the bikes I have is a supermoto which tends to have quite a bit of vibrations, and many in those threads talked about various hardware failures they contributed to being vibrated from mounted to the bars. 

 

I know my AFR gauge on my supermoto is from company that does flat salt racing and it's solidly mounting and it vibrates like it's in a paint shaker while riding. I really need to add a rubber bushing to it. 

Out of curiosity, would a foam surrounding work in the mount?

In theory it would allow more shock to be dispersed and be less straining on the phone since it would slow down much slower and... I guess the word is gracefully(?)

[IAmAndre]

Thanks for your replies! I'm seeing anti-vibration mounts like this: https://a.co/d/1gFc2cO

 

I guess it might do the trick.

[Mark Kaine]

I honestly thought this is about WeChat UwU

 

Answer: it's fine really, you can shake all day (not that I tried personally or anything! )

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

I honestly thought this is about WeChat UwU

 

Answer: it's fine really, you can shake all day (not that I tried personally or anything! )

The more I'm looking into it, the more I'm seeing people complaining about issue like autofocus stopping working. I guess these are rare occurrences but it doesn't hurt to just get a mount with some sort of dampening.

[OddOod]

As with many things, the danger is in the dose. Constant low intensity shaking isn't gonna damage anything ever. But once you start pulling thousands of Gs you start running risks. Phones really are designed to drop from ~5ft without major internal damage and that can be up to 500Gs (think no case, metal frame onto concrete). At thousands of Gs you do risk some damage to the zoom lens assembly etc.
The risk you should be thinking about is actually damage to the battery. I know my earbuds case gets less and less charge capacity the more I drop it, but that's just down to how batteries work

[Mark Kaine]

10 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The more I'm looking into it, the more I'm seeing people complaining about issue like autofocus stopping working. I guess these are rare occurrences but it doesn't hurt to just get a mount with some sort of dampening.

Yeah if you mount it somewhere, car, bike, etc I can see some damage happening, but not really from shaking it in your hand.

 

Those would be rather impact damages rather than shake damages?

 

 

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

 I know my earbuds case gets less and less charge capacity the more I drop it, but that's just down to how batteries work

As in the chemicals inside being messed up?

[OddOod]

3 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

As in the chemicals inside being messed up?

Ish, yeah. It's been a decade since I did battery chemistry so some of this is probably wrong, but my understanding is:
Basically a battery is storing energy by electroplating one metal onto another metal and discharging it by putting the coating metal back into an acid solution. If you have a fully charged battery, there is a lot of metal that's been plated onto the thing. If you hit the battery hard, you can knock some of the bits that have been deposited on the thing off of it, and then those bits that are floating around can no longer be used for energy storage. 
Again, some of this is probably wrong and I should be using words like anode and cathode, but this is the general gist of it. 

[IAmAndre]

7 hours ago, Millios said:

Out of curiosity, would a foam surrounding work in the mount?

In theory it would allow more shock to be dispersed and be less straining on the phone since it would slow down much slower and... I guess the word is gracefully(?)

Correct, that’s the principle applied with dampening-enabled mounts.

[IAmAndre]

Just found this article from Apple and it kind of answers the question: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102175