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| Decay Chain |
 Title text: If you have an old phone in a drawer, and you listen very carefully, you can occasionally hear the occasional tap of an emitted SIM card hitting the side of the drawer as the phone transmutes to a lower-end model. |
Explanation
This comic suggests that as iPhones get heavier (as model iterations get higher) they, like heavier chemical elements, become unstable and susceptible to decay. In science, some atoms decay into other atoms, releasing some energy in the process. This process is generally dictated by the ratio and configuration of the positively charged protons in an atomic nucleus, which dictate its chemical identity, with the neutrons, which need to act to keep the protons in as stable a clump as possible. Particular isotopes, increasingly so for the heavier atoms, are known to be subject to one or other modes of nuclear decay in order to attain a more stable and simpler form, including by several such steps. This comic humorously explores how an iPhone would decay if decaying works the same, which is obviously absurd as iPhones are not radioactive and thus aren't subject to atomic decay.
The difference between iPhones undergoing alpha decay (vertically downwards, in the diagram) is the change in model number from a higher one to one two steps lower, except for the step involving the iPhone X which apparently exists instead of a "9" model. This is equivalent to the change in atomic number, when two unstable protons (together with a couple of neutrons) leave the nucleus in the form of a helium ion. The mass number of such atoms reduces by four (that held by the departing He2+), though no evidence is given as to how the respective masses of the phones actually changes in this analogy.
The process of beta minus decay (in elements, the effective conversion of a neutron into a proton and a free electron) raises the atomic number by one by transforming an excess neutral particle to a positive one, by emiting the small negatively charged beta particle (leaving the mass practically the same). In the terms of iPhones, this is represented by the removal of a brand-name modifier (usually denoting additional features included within the same model range) in order to perform a version-upgrade but now being closer to that new range's most basic release of model. This is represented by a sideways and upwards step. The decay step from the iPhone 13 Pro to the iPhone 14 Plus, which is missing a symbol, is clearly one of the beta minus decay steps.
(After alpha or beta decay, atoms may then emit gamma radiation as they rearrange their atomic state without changing their composition, but this process does not change the element in any meaningful way. It also will occur when neutron capture and/or atomic fission has occured, which is generally considered outwith the natural decay chain of any such isotope, and can also result from nuclear fusion.)
The title text suggests that the "alpha particle" of the iPhone is a SIM card, and that alpha-decaying phones will emit one of these each time (despite few phones having more than two, and most working ones only having one, but perhaps that's part of the mystery of telephonic transmutation). The sound of an old phone, sitting in a drawer, ejecting the unnecessary SIM is likened to the slow click of a Geiger counter being prompted to register the decay particles ejected from a decaying radioisotope. Presumably, without the sound, one would never otherwise know if the phone even had decayed without opening the drawer to find out.
Transcript
[A flowchart with arrows leading from a circle with the words "iPhone 16 Pro Max", to circles with other iPhone names, eventually leading to a circle with the words "iPhone 7"]
- [Caption below the panel:]
- Physicists believe that an iPhone 16 Pro Max will, if left alone long enough, eventually decay into an iPhone 7, the heaviest stable model.
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