iPhone XS drop test: Why this crazy Apple fan THREW his brand new iPhone down the Sydney Opera House steps

After months of expectation, the new iPhone XS and XS Max smartphones are finally on sale and waiting to be shipped to Apple fans around the world.

What do you do when you get a new iPhone? Admire the beauty of the new design or maybe take some selfies to try out the new camera.

You probably don’t throw it down the steps of the Sydney Opera House, unless you’re James Griffith, co-founder and CEO of Mous, a London-based start-up that makes unbreakable iPhone cases.

Thanks to Mous’s specially designed material, named Airoshock, its cases are unbelievably thin but incredibly protective - meaning you can lob your brand new phone about 30 feet and it will survive, as demonstrated by Griffith.

“Our cases only add 2.5mm to the phone’s thickness, and to be protective they have to fit exactly: the fit has to be accurate to 1/10th of a millimetre, or about the thickness of a human hair,” Lucy Hutchinson, Mous co-founder and head of brand, tells the Standard.

Pulling off crazy stunts is all part of the Mous DNA. The start-up enjoys pushing their designs to the limits, whether it’s dropping phones from a helicopter to try out the latest case, or hammering a nail onto a new screen protector design to prove it works.

But, it’s particularly terrifying when they attempt drop tests at new iPhone releases. Apple keeps the specs of new devices firmly under wraps on the lead up to the launch, so the Mous team have to make educated guesses surrounding the new phones in order to create its next range of cases.

“We observe Apple’s design trends and rumours obsessively. But at the end of the day we really won’t know until the day of the launch” says Griffith.

“It’s really nerve-wracking. We’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars into building this machinery to build tens of thousands of phone cases, and until the day the new iPhones launch we can’t be 100 per cent sure whether they will fit.”

Luckily for Mous, the team have managed to make this new case work, meaning Griffith’s brand new iPhone survives the Sydney drop test.

Don’t expect the company to stop with its antics anytime soon. For Griffith, it’s all part of the fun.

"We'll either make millions or seriously damage the business - but we've decided is worth it,” he adds.