'A moose hit me' and other ways people damage their gizmos
- Reference: 1721997970
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/07/26/device_damage_survey/
- Source link:
It probably won't surprise anyone that a cracked screen is the most common form of device damage, but a UK [1]survey by Secure Data Recovery found that as many as one in six people here may be using a phone with a cracked screen at any given moment.
This writer recalls that multiple iPhones with cracked screens can usually be counted on commuter trains in and out of the UK capital, so the latter isn't much of a surprise either. The much-maligned millennials are the most likely folk to have broken their phones multiple times in their lives, according to Secure Data Recovery.
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And it isn't just phones – laptops are frequently damaged by being dropped or having a key broken somehow. Dropping it, spilling liquid, or breaking a key appear to be the most common mishaps reported overall.
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This writer can also relate from personal experience that smartphone makers seem to have a penchant for giving their devices smooth, glass-like casings that mean if you place them on anything other than a totally flat surface, they just slide off. It's almost as if they want you to break them.
Hence over 77 percent of survey respondents that have broken their phone say they cracked the screen, while getting debris stuck in the headphone or charging socket is the second most common mishap. Spillages or being dropped into the toilet or sink feature highly, while nearly 15 percent of respondents report their device was damaged by them throwing it in anger.
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Whether they were angry with the device itself or it was just handy when they wanted something to hurl at someone isn't detailed.
A surprising proportion of people report simply losing their device (18.87 percent), or more specifically, leaving it on public transport or a taxi (16.49 percent), at a restaurant or bar (16 percent), or even leaving it on top of a car (6 percent of respondents, would you believe?).
There are also a number of odd or simply stupid ways that Brits have reported damaging or writing off their device, such as leaving their phone sitting on top of a gas hob, then turning on the wrong burner, or someone holding the phone between their teeth while using it as a torch and cracking the screen.
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Then there is the unfortunate respondent who, while cutting the grass, had their phone fall out of their pocket and their lawnmower ran over it, or another who admits to shaking a bottle of chocolate milk in front of their PC and the top came off, showering the contents over 3 monitors and their keyboard.
[7]Things are going Z-shaped at Huawei: Chinese giant preps three-screen folding smartphone
[8]With users mostly happy to keep older kit, Macs just ain't selling like they used to
[9]Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple
[10]Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket
Pets and children also feature as causes of damage and destruction, with someone reporting that their dog ate the keys off their PC keyboard, another that their cat peed on their MacBook and killed it. Another relates that their toddler tripped while running with their phone, and it sailed gracefully into their pond.
Secure Data Recovery previously carried out a [11]similar survey in the US, which is where one respondent said they damaged their phone when a moose hit them while they were out cycling.
Other reported mishaps from the Land of the Free included the phone going in the washing machine, "my child decided that my phone was thirsty," and dropping the phone while shoveling snow and then hitting it with the shovel.
The survey found that a surprising 23 percent of Americans admit to having dropped their phone in the toilet, while 44 percent reported that they tend to drop their phone at least once a week.
Dropping your phone also varies by state, with 65 percent of respondents from Utah and 58 percent from Connecticut admitting they drop their phones at least once a week.
And when it comes to having to replace a phone because of breaking it, 95 percent of respondents from Texas said they had done this, with Missouri and Oklahoma at 88 percent, Illinois on 86 percent, and South Carolina on 85 percent.
Secure Data Recovery is, of course, keen to point out that it can retrieve data from defunct devices such as hard drives, SSDs, smartphones and SD cards, and says it has a "no data, no recovery fee" guarantee.
The company claims that average Brit has spent $476.34 on phone replacements and repairs, while for Americans in the earlier survey, the figure came to an average of $617 on phone repairs. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.securedatarecovery.co.uk/blog/where-uk-residents-break-their-devices-the-most
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZqPIJPBXIH@i2SPmsaZbswAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZqPIJPBXIH@i2SPmsaZbswAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZqPIJPBXIH@i2SPmsaZbswAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZqPIJPBXIH@i2SPmsaZbswAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZqPIJPBXIH@i2SPmsaZbswAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/25/huawei_triple_screen_phone/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/11/mac_upgrade_not_happening/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/dont_dry_iphone_rice/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/20/euro_phones_figures_canalys/
[11] https://www.securedatarecovery.com/blog/states-break-phones-most
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
I think this is the weirdos who keep their phone in their shirt pocket. Making leaning over an exercise in mobile-jeopardy.
Mine lives in my trouser pocket. It's never fallen out. I tend to forget it's there - so it's usually with me. So if I was mowing the lawn, I'd probably have it. I haven't mown a lawn since moving out of my parents' - not having owned a garden since. I don't think I've mown a lawn since owning a mobile.
The more important question is: why was the moose riding a bicycle?
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
It was on its way to go bite my sister.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
The more important question is: why was the moose riding a bicycle?
The way the article reads it is as though the moose jumped out from behind a tree and gave the cyclist a smack rather than the speeding cyclist colliding with the unfortunate cervid.
The peeing cat being electrocuted by the macbook and the toddler sailing into the pond were pretty tough on the cat and child too. :)
For the record at one point forgetting a pen (biro) left above the function keys on a laptop/notebook before closing it was a frequent cause of broken screens. (Think mechanical advantage or nutcracker - crunch!)
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
Keep your nuts out of the laptop. For safety, remain decently clad whilst computing.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
> Mine lives in my trouser pocket.
This can create a different problem (depending on the kind of trousers you wear): Sitting with your phone in the back pocket will bend the phone. I recall iPhones having that problem after prolonged residence in back pockets of skintight jeans: They invented the first curved screen phones.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
Things always fall out of back pockets. And it's easy to steal wallets, or phones, from there. So it has to go in your front ones - where it can cook your meat and two veg.
I had a belt clip on my old Motorola Microtac - back in the 90s. Micro being a relative term. With the 8 hour battery it wouldn't fit in any trouser pocket - with the 4 hour one it would go in a big pocket.
That's 8 hour's standby time. I think it was only 1 hour talk time.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
Ride-on mower, BT ear defenders, audiobook. It's two hours of uninterrupted not-having-to-think-very-hard.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
I've mowed a little baby flip phone - probably from 2003 or 4 . NEC ? or something like that - It was in the shirt pocket and I was mowing the grass straight after work. Bent over to empty the grass collection bucket. Phone fell out n in the longer grass next to the mower. On the next run down the garden ... BANG.. shards of phone everywhere.
NEC 0 : Hayter Petrol 1
I also managed to leave another flipper in a shirt pocket, and wash it.. That one survived surprisingly - although took a week or so for the microphone to dry out.
Since then (luckily) I've not broken any of the fondle slab phones I've owned.
Re: Dropping the phone while gardening
Can't speak for others but when I'm mowing the lawn I use my phone to listen to music, as usually once I've finished the mowing I've got weeding etc to do and as I hate gardening of any sort I tend to spend longer doing it as I've left it too long.
I probably drop my phone more than once a week. Hence it's in a case - and bears no cracks. Mostly its while sitting down in carpeted rooms - and I'm also very good at getting my foot underneath it to break its fall. But I am a clumsy oaf.
I think I've only ever broken one phone - but all 3 of my iPads have ended up with cracked screens. Admittedly I've kept those for an average of 5 years (and the iPad 1 was a minor crack made by someone else) - whereas my phones get changed more often. Maybe every 3. Partly I think that's because the iPad has a much bigger screen, and Apple's cases are rubbish. But also I hold the iPad for much longer than the phone.
I've got poor vision and very little depth perception - hence the clumsiness, so guess I'm not representative. Weirdly I can often catch stuff I drop because my brain knows where it started from when toching it. But i can't even catch a football thrown to me slowly, because being able to see it doesn't mean I can tell how far away it is.
At school I refused to play cricket, on the grounds of not being able to see the ball. My PE teacher told me to umpire instead. If you've not got a white stick, people seem to find it very hard not to think you're making it up. "That was never LBW! Are you blind?" - "Erm. It's complicated." I also refused to umpire. Failed to get out of cross-country running though. Uphill through the pig farm was not fun! Pig shit is not a high-traction surface.
However well-sighted the umpire there are always two schools of thought about any LBW decision.
I think I'd have given everyone out as quickly as possible.
Of course
you could always drop it off a North Sea ferry.
Just a coincidence, I'm sure
I have always been surprised that so many freak laptop accidents occur three weeks after the user has been turned down for an upgrade.
Re: Just a coincidence, I'm sure
Don't you have a stock of old, slow and very grubby replacements especially for such occasions?
I suppose the dog eating the keys is a sort of meta version of eating the homework.
"You said that last week."
"Yes but it still has no keys. They did come out eventually but we didn't fancy putting them back."
My dog was sick on my french textbook. Fortunately it had a plastic cover - but it took a long time to clean it. Yuck.
Poor kid!
> Another relates that their toddler tripped while running with their phone, and it sailed gracefully into their pond.
Hope the parents were around to fish the poor kid out ASAP.
Some notable device accidents I have seen and dealt with during my career:
Ran over surface book with own car
Dropped laptop in hot pea soup
Melted IBM Thinkpad keyboard and nipple with a cigarette after falling asleep (at least the company was a major cigarette manufacturer and producer of smoking pipes)
Embedded laptop in partition wall after walking across the office at warp speed and colliding with said wall
Left laptop in gym bag with leaking slimming drink - announced the laptop had smoke coming out of it when arriving in the office and asked the IT team to "smell the laptop"
I used to work at one of the 2 large laptop OEMs and due to the cost of screen replacements at the time (this was around 2006/07 and a new screen was probably half the cost of the machine just for the part, never mind the time it took for an engineer to fit them) we required photos of the screen to ensure it was an actual failure and not user damage (unless they had the appropriate coverage).
Used to see pens and scissors and occasionally screwdrivers outline on the the dead screen where the lid had been closed on them, another one that was surprisingly common was lipbalm. Sometimes the plastic tubes, but more often the small metal tins that Vaseline lipbalm came in.
Also being in Scotland, Irn Bru spillage was another common issue. Makes you wonder what it does to your insides when you see what it does to a PCB - the damage is far worse than any other soft drink I've ever seen.
My worse ones….
I put a projector on the road and then backed out the pool car, straight over it. That one took a bit of explaining as it was on the office car park.
I had a colleague put a MacBook in his backpack jumped on a motorbike and forgot to fasten the top of the backback. It escaped was was run over by a lorry, what was recovered was, an interesting shape….it did still try and boot though….
Mind you being a network engineer I have lost several laptops to comms rooms incidents. Usually involving a usb lead that snagged rather than coming out and ripping the usb ports out of the case. Of falling off the top of a cabinet whilst trying to run diagnostics on something or other,
And finally I remember the dodgy machine that came in for investigation, took the lid off fired it up and there was a 1” flame coming out of a component on the motherboard, we killed it and put a warranty claim in for that one.
Gas hob?
That was deliberate.
But an induction hob, now that's a natural worksurface and you'd expect people to put things on it. Wonder what happens when a device is put on an induction hob and the wrong ring is turned up? Given the nature of lithium batteries I won't be trying this myself.
Dropping the phone while gardening
I can understand you placing your phone on a table and it falling off. I can understand you taking your phone out of your pocket, fumbling, and dropping it.
I cannot understand you mowing the lawn with your phone. You're mowing the fucking lawn. You can live without your slab of toxic materials during that time.