Apple iPhone may be incredibly fragile!
By Will Park on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 3:23 PM PST In Apple, Devices, Rumors, iPhone
We’re not all that surprised to hear that a device as thin, and hardware packed (3G naysayers, hold your lip, there’s multi-touch and accelerometers in there) as the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone may turn out to be more fragile than the average mobile phone. With a full-screen multi-touch LCD covered in glass, we cringe at the prospect of what a seemingly sight 3-foot drop could do to the device.
Apparently, David Ciccone of Mobility Today, has been prodding AT&T (NYSE: T) employees for info on the iPhone. These “fully briefed” employees unanimously stated that the Apple iPhone was “extremely fragile” and that a 3-foot drop could turn your $600 Apple iPhone into a $600, sleek, metal and glass-clad paper-weight. The employees have been instructed to push the handset insurace plan on customers.
We assume that most of our readers, like us, are extremely careful with our gadgets (verging on clinically obsessed) - especially with our mobile phones. We make sure our fingers are clean before touching them. We consciously consider every move we make whilst holding said precious gadget. We swath our gadgets in all manner of protective case and screen solutions. Yet, for the majority of iPhone hopefuls, we can imagine that they will treat their new iPhone just as they had any other gadget - which is to say, not very well. After the first few days, when the initial enchantment with the device wears away, it’s likely that we’ll be seeing reports of iPhone drops coming in through the various internets.
The lesson here? Be careful with your iPhone. You just paid $600 for it, treat it like it’s worth it! (Oh, and maybe get that handset insurance).
[Via: Mobility Today]
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It’s all BS. My brother owns an iPhone, and I personally saw him drop it out of his UPS uniform from roughly 5 feet, then he accidentally kicked it another 4 feet on concrete. Although it slid on its back, the iPhone worked PERFECTLY fine and the aperture was left unscratched (Even though the back was scratched up to hell).
It all depends on how lucky you are when you drop it. Mine fell two feet from my nightstand to a wooden floor and the screen cracked instantly.
As for handset insurance, neither Apple nor AT&T even offer it. The best bet is to buy your phone with an AMEX card or Visa Signature card so you get purchase protection. That, or make sure you add the damn thing to your homeowners insurance policy (and be prepared to eat the deductible anyway).
Check eBay and you’ll find literally dozens of cracked iPhones. Fortunately, some wingnuts in Europe are paying up to $350 for broken iPhones; I sold mine to a guy in France for that much. Beats hell out of paying Apple $250 for a refurbished replacement.