What’s the worst thing that’s happened to your smartphone?

Friday, November 12th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

Since our upcoming Mobile Workforce Report (next week!) has some insight into this question, I wanted to highlight some of the responses.

Guess which age group tends to lose a smartphone most often? They tend to out and about more often and probably left it in a bar or cab at 7th Avenue. Maybe the leaving-it-in-a-bar story has been topped out (German beer anyone?).

We did have plenty of comments about how mobile employees smartphones were broken or destroyed. It was hard reading the comments, after having one of my fave phones recently die, after I had the cracked screen replaced, which killed the camera. I had even tried a factory reset (ah – it wipes out my data). To completely typecast, my Android became a Blackberry (no touch screen!) and then suddenly an iPhone (no calls!).

Many of the comments fell into some easy-to-identify categories:

• “It dropped” – 20 percent
• “It just stopped working” – 17 percent
• Something having to do with water – 15 percent

Fell in the lake

In my pocket and then I did my laundry

Left out in a Florida storm

And my favorite: “died after a 10 second freak downpour while climbing Kilimanjaro”

And yes, the dreaded, “dropped in the toilet” (thanks Microsoft for making that too visual)

• Some reported track balls popping out. For phones without a touchscreen (hello RIM?), that sounds bad
• “I left it on the roof of my car and then drove off. I realized what I had done shortly after the fact but it was too late; it had fallen and was run over by the car.” Double-ouch.
• My dog mangled it

Via social media I got more answers:

How about being humiliated in Verizon when I pulled out my ANCIENT work blackberry that is the size of a small paperback and they all laughed

Left mine over the years at Bar(s), Taxi, Airplane, Lake. Dropped one rock climbing…left one on top of my car, drove away and ran over it. Flippen expensive now that I think about it….

I have always opted out of having my employer provide my cell phone hardware so that when I drop it in the toilet (twice) I have nobody to answer to but myself.

I left mine sitting on my motorcycle and drove onto the highway. It went flying!

I dropped mine in a beer…. just for a second though

I left mine out on the bottom part of the chimney and found it four days later. It had been rained on but it was fine.

While waiting for my car to come through a carwash, I received a call from a colleague. Little did I realize the carwash staff had left the ignition in the accessory position, so the bluetooth connection via the GPS unit was active, and the car was close enough to me and my cellphone that the bluetooth stayed connected. I heard nothing, but my colleague heard a carwash person attempting to talk about business.

Many had additional frustrations, in that something didn’t work, operating system or hardware, and some, whether following their own or support’s not-exactly-helpful advice, wiped out all their data. And then the phone still didn’t work.

One person, in IT support no less, reported drop kicking one phone across a busy intersection and throwing another against a wall after some frustrating calls. You would be right in guessing that his employer pays for those phones. Next week, we will have additional insight into personal vs. corporate liability for smartphones and whether behavior changes. (You betcha!)

Let me know if you have a story to share.

Tags: smartphone