Google Sends Smartphones into the Atmosphere

How do you know if your smartphone products and their internal sensors will hold-up in freezing temperatures? That is what a team of Google engineers and students from the University of California, Santa Cruz set out to learn by sending Nexus S smartphones to the edge of space with helium-filled weather balloons and Styrofoam coolers.

Seven Styrofoam coolers each contained a Google Nexus S smartphone, and were mounted with video cameras facing outward. They were attached to the weather balloons and let loose is hopes to understand how the phone's sensors would function at freezing cold, near-vacuum temperatures.

About 3 hours after the balloons were launched, many reached higher than 32,000 meters before popping. Once popped, each cooler took approximately 20-30 minutes to return to Earth, slowed slightly by small parachutes.

Once returned, the team of engineers and students found that the phones were intact and still functioning. Google engineers are now sifting through the sensors data and video captured to see what information can be uncovered there.

This experiment was originally thought of as being "for fun," but Google is already planning future launches.

Do you think there is value to this kind of experimentation?

Source: New Scientist