Your Most Crushing Stories About Smashing Your Phones

Nothing feels dumber than smashing your phone out of sheer carelessness and stupidity. No one knows this better than me. A few weeks ago, we asked you to share how you destroyed your expensive pocket computer. Here are the very finest stories.

Into the crapper

Managed to drop mine in the toilet – post feculence. The screen began to flicker, and bar lines emerged – slowly but surely glitching out. I was fare welled with a distorted apple logo shown when the device realised it’s untimely fate, with the left third spreading slowly across the screen as the excrement-ridden water reached its grasp for more electric components. I watched, tearful, as it slowly yet deliberately perished in my fetid hands.

$350 dollars and a trip to an apple service store later, and I had an identical replacement. 10/10 couldn’t recommend any more.

— boneylad

It’s not your phone’s fault, OK?

A few years ago I chucked my phone (T-Mobile G2) against a couch cushion in frustration over a basketball game. I figured the couch was safe, turns out I was wrong. The G2 was one of those sliding keyboard phones that was all the rage a while back, it turns out that it explodes even if thrown against something relatively soft, like a couch.

— UTHorsey

Crushing

I tried like hell, but my phone ended up surviving.

My office compacts its cardboard to sell to a recycler. Instead of breaking down my boxes at home like a sucker, I just bring them in. The company gets money off my lazy butt. Win-Win. One day I brought in a bunch of nested boxes along from home along with my lunch and some papework I took with me. My hands were full coming from my car so I threw everything I was attempting to carry, including my phone, into the boxes to make life easier for me. When I got to the compacter, I fished around and removed my lunch and paperwork forgetting that my HTC One was in there as well. After a couple of hours without my phone, I went to my car figuring it was there when my heart just dropped. I realised where I last had my phone. The compactor had been operated several times, but I called it from a laughing co-worker’s phone and I heard it vibrating. A few minutes and a few feet of compacted cardboard later, I had my phone back. Surely, the corrugated cardboard saved the day. The only thing wrong with my phone is that on the top left the glass is a fraction of a millimetre akimbo with respect to the bezel. It can’t be seen, only felt with a finger. It annoys me, but I’m very thankful at the same time!

— mrgoodbeer

Not by accident

I have only destroyed 2 phones deliberately:

First was an HTC TyTn and I snapped that in two like a dry twig. God it felt good. The touch screen was never as responsive as I’d like and one day, when it failed to perform up to my expectations, I snapped…so did the phone.

The second was my previous phone. It was a Samsung Galaxy S5. I threw it on the ground…hard. Then, I threw it again, and again, and again. It has a quite crunchy screen now and will not boot. I loathed that phone. In reality, I loathed what Samsung did to that phone with their bloatware. It has sworn me off of Android that has ANY 3rd party overlays or bloatware. In my defence, I was quite drunk when I did that on New Years Eve but I don’t regret it at all.

— Kryten2X4B-523P

A picture’s worth a thousand words

Icy stairs
— Matthew Urso

Exercise is bad for phones

I’ve broken about 5 iPhones myself. One I forgot I had it on my lap while driving, so it went tumbling onto the asphalt when I got out of the car. Two of them I broke while running: the first one I was just so exhausted it simply slipped out of my hand while my heart was beating a 180 bpm; the other one I broke when I tripped, falling forward at high speed, sending my phone flying, leaving it so badly shattered I could see the camera hanging out of a big hole where the screen used to be. And I broke at least two others. And, amazingly, Apple had no problem replacing all of them.

So, yeah, I definitely sympathize with you.

— shimanopower

A good Samaritan never wins

I’ve only smashed two phones in my life. The first one happened somewhere in the middle of me trying to break up a fight. One of the people fighting was being held back by someone else and flailed his legs around to kick anyone nearby. I caught a shoe on the side of my leg, and my phone paid the price.

The second one occurred while I was skateboarding. A drunk frat boy type didn’t like something about me (I really don’t know, I’d never met the guy), and decided to lunge at me from the sidewalk and tackle me into the road. If it wasn’t for the large, linebacker looking dude that witnessed it, picked the kid up by the neck, and quite possibly scared the actual shit out of him, I’m fairly sure the kid would have wound up in the ER with a skate truck lodged in his head, and I would have spent some time in an orange jumpsuit.

With that said, I have lost 3 phones to the Atlantic Ocean. I like to think that dolphins found them and use them to stay in touch with each other.

— SmugAardvark

Range Rover vs iPhone has an obvious winner

My phone was run over by a $US200k Rover.

Manager asks me to ‘check out’ a car in the service drive just as I’m about to test drive an F-Type R( I always take it on test drives).

So. I crawl under this full size for a quick leak check…and my phone falls out. Customer drives off. I don’t notice untill the manager calls me over intercom. I go into his office “I think you dropped your phone, it broke” with no emotion whatsoever. Didn’t even hand it to me, just pointed to in on the shelf.

What a dick. Whats worse is I’m flat rate and I did that leak check pro-bono. After that I don’t do anything without an RO.

— Mecevans

Hold on tight young grasshopper

While holding my iPhone 4s in my left hand playing Solitaire, a grasshopper landed on the back of my hand sticking it’s sharp feet into my hand. I flung the grasshopper and iPhone up into the air. The iPhone landed on a concrete floor shattering the glass. The screen still worked.

I crushed the grasshopper and sold the iPhone on eBay for approx. $US175.

— Buckaroo

Not worth it

Lets just say if you have a phone in a front shirt pocket, don’t bend over to pick up that quarter you just dropped.

Just let it go.

Yeah you have $US0.25, but you’re out the cost of a new phone screen.

— Robert A Petersen

Tires are your phone’s enemy

We arrived at a Christmas house party.

My wife unknowingly dropped her phone as she got out the passenger side. After going inside and learning we were short on a few party items (since we were kinda helping host this party), I volunteered to run to the store.

Turns out her phone had fallen directly behind the tire, and I ran it the fuck over as soon as I backed out of the driveway.

Phone still worked, despite a completely spiderwebbed screen.

— juansmith

A damn miracle

I have a story of how I miraculously did not break my phone. My old phone was a Motorola Droid X2. I drive a car that does not have a working 12v in the front seat, so I would charge my phone off of one in the rear. I was at a gas station and I accidently dropped my phone onto the pavement outside the door with the phone still firmly attached to the charger and closed the door. As I drove away from the gas station a mile or so down the highway I heard a noise. Like something was dragging from my car. I look down and notice the cable is shut in the door. I opened the door and there was my phone, happily skipping along the cement at 55mph. I pulled it back into the car and to my amazement it was fine. The metal on the exterior was scraped up pretty bad, and the screen had some deep scratches, but it was not cracked. The phone worked as well as it always did after that.

The craziest part of this story is I did not have a case.

— Fargus

Buried alive

When I was working for Public Works as a heavy equipment operator about 12 or 13 years ago, I accidentally buried one of my old Nokia 5100s under a few tons of mud. Never found it again, but I bet if I dug it up right now, I could probably turn that fucker on and make a call.

Other than that, every phone I’ve had since 2001 (when I graduated from pagers to phones) has been in good working condition when I retired it. I don’t like cases, either. I’m just careful with my phones and I have a good holster for them.

— drewcrosby