Boulevard of broken screens

There is, fortunately, only one tale I can tell about busted smartphone screens and that is this one:

It was a few iPhone generations ago, as the above photo clearly shows, and it was rather early for someone who has never been a morning person. I had turned off my alarm, reluctantly clambered out of bed and was rubbing the sleep from my eyes when it happened.

Kid, I am feeling you on this.

I was reaching for my phone to check the weather when it slipped right out of my hands, falling some 4+ feet to the floor where it hit in the worst possible spot: The corner.

As other iPhone users can likely tell you, there is no worse place for a dropped phone to land. I've since dropped a few different smartphones which have landed either face-up or face-down and luckily remained relatively unscathed. But landing on the corner? Surefire destruction.

I felt a little sick to my stomach when I picked up my phone and saw the pattern of cracks spread across its face. It was, thankfully, still operational but no longer a shiny, beautiful, undamaged gadget. Now it just looked busted, like all the other cracked and damaged phones I saw folks using on the bus. I had admittedly assumed these people were all careless with their things, instead of just normal, clumsy human beings, and here I was holding my formerly lovely smartphone and murmuring "Oh.....no, no, no."

MRW I realized I'd cracked the face of my iPhone.

I was upset, but thankful that my phone at least still worked. A few days later at my favorite beer garden, a gent sitting next to me recommended that I use packing tape to seal the front face of my phone — both to prevent moisture from getting inside the device, as well as to prevent any damage to my fingers as I attempted to use a cracked and broken touch screen. This actually worked quite well; in the end, I was able to use that busted, packing-tape-sealed 3S all the way up until software upgrades made it infuriatingly slow and obsolete.

Since then, I've learned my lesson: All my smartphones get put into protective cases immediately lest they meet the same fate. Because I know that I, too, am a normal, clumsy human being capable of graceful feats like falling up stairs and tripping over my own feet, I do my best to ensure my phone is kept away from ledges, open pockets and other places it may meet an untimely end. So far, I've gotten pretty lucky that I haven't broken any more smartphone screens — although I did once fracture an ankle because I was looking at my phone instead of where I was walking, that's a story for another time.