Chances are that in any public area you will see someone using a smartphone with a broken screen. It wasn’t like this a few years ago-for one thing a lot less people had smartphones, but also phones had bigger bezels, smaller glass or plastic screens, were less likely to be used as a camera or video recorder, and were a lot easier to hold on to. The modern thin and light devices are therefore a lot more likely to suffer an untimely demise. A recent study conducted by Verizon Wireless in collaboration with KRC Research determined that nearly 49% of mobile phone owners in the US have lost or broken their devices at one point in time.
The survey was conducted on more than 1,000 consumers and determined that 57% of US-based mobile phone users have lost or broken more than one mobile devices over the years. The results of the survey show 51% of mobile phone owners have dropped them, 6% of them have damaged their phone by throwing it or sitting on it. Roughly 4% of the respondents have broken their phone by driving over it or submerging it. Most often phones are damaged at home (55%) or bathrooms (27%). The study shows that 54% of mobile phone owners drop their handsets at least once a week, but some demographics have more buttery-fingers than others. Millennials drop their mobile phones twice as many times than previous generations. The survey also suggests that parents are 1.5 times more likely to lose or break their devices than owners who don’t have children.
The graphic above lists some of the more embarrassing ways survey participants have broken their phone. Do you have an embarrassing smartphone-damaging story of your own? Leave it in the comments!
The survey and results can be accessed at Verizon Wireless.
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Most of my phones die from use. Lost a laptop when the dog came running though the house and the power cord (no mag locks at this time) snagged on her collar, and a brand new toshiba exploded down the hall, bouncing and slaming against the floors and wall.
Ouch!
I dropped a loaner Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and cracked the glass on the back. :-/
Hehe I remember you doing that.
I, with my Nexus 4 phone all snuggly in my pocket, inadvertently drove an ATV into a muddy puddle that turned out to be aver 4′ deep… and very cold!
Both the ATV and the phone disagreed with the bath… not that I was all that impressed either 🙂 All three of us eventually recovered… albeit with a lot of work on the ATV and weeks of drying for the phone. Meanwhile, I replaced it with the Nexus 6… which claims to be water resistant… not that I am inclined to test that again 🙂
I always kept my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone in a rubberized case, so that it, hopefully, would never break. The one day I decide to temporarily change the rubberized case to a wallet-type case is the day I drop it in the parking lot… corner down. Of course, that was now my excuse to get the new S7 Edge!
Well don’t make the same mistake again: http://www.cnet.com/news/oooops-this-is-why-your-galaxy-s7-needs-a-case/
About 10 years ago I was working in Indonesia in west Sumatra. One night we were walking to a restaurant and got caught in a cloudburst. We found a shop awning to stand under until it passed. Then while walking along my Nokia rang and I answered it. When putting it back in my pocket I dropped it — right into a large puddle. When I got back to the hotel I took the phone apart, as much as I could, and put it in front of the A/C vent. The next morning I put the battery and SIM card back in…and it worked! Loved those Nokias.
You’d be hard-pressed to find something as durable these days.
I do drop my phone a lot, but I’ve been lucky so far that it has not dropped in water or get broken. I keep a good protector on it, plus the phone is water proof up to a certain point if it does ever get dropped in water. The most that ever happens to my phones is the battery ends up dying.
I had mine on the kitchen sink. Took a hot baking sheet out of the 400° oven to check on hash browns I was cooking. Didn’t realize that I set the hot baking sheet on my phone. It stuck to bottom and went back in the oven with the hash browns. Looked everywhere for phone for 10 minutes. Opened oven and just saw a pool of melted teal goo. Sigh…I think I’m still in shock.
Oh no! What brand of phone was it?