I do not have an iPhone any longer . I do n’t be after to buy another one . I adore Apple ’s wonderful hunk of glass and aluminum , but I ’m like Lennie with a bunny when I have one in my hands : I love it so much and so intensely that I pop it .
I remember when I was about 12 , a euphony shop deadbeat told me he liked put the first ding on a new guitar . Once it has a scratch , you may stop worrying and rock . This does not apply to smartphones . Cracked screens are not charming patina . scratch are not impressive spirit experience indicators . In 20 years , I have never kill a guitar , but amazingly , five iPhones have go by my mitt since 2009 .
Here ’s how , that it may aid you walk a less destructive way than I have .

iPhone 3G
January 2009 - June 2010
It ’s impossible to leave the first time you dingdong a $ 300 widget . My friend Ben was visiting San Francisco , and after a nighttime of fuddle beer in another Quaker ’s kitchen , we go to get taco . I was trying to show him on my fancy plaything where we were on a function , and as I was handing him the phone on a dark street , it just fall out of my hand . It attain the sidewalk look down with a crunch .
But my poor 3 G did n’t die until a few months later when one dark I fall benumbed drinking a 40 of King Cobra . Upon waking , I found my phone drown in a pool of malt pot likker .

iPhone 4 (#1)
July 2010 – December 2012
Luckily , the iPhone 4 had just been announced when my first phone minute it . It took me about a month to get off the waitlist . That was one of the most empowering moment of my life . I do n’t intend getting the new iPhone ; I mean using an old Samsung flip phone for a month and realizing I did n’t involve the total net in my pocket every waking second .
Over a year clear uneventfully with my first iPhone 4 . Then the third Gizmodo Gallery find . The week - long pop - up shop class in the Lower East Side was full of awe-inspiring gadgets andfun interactive toys . It was a sport showing during the sidereal day , and at Nox we threw parties . After one of them , I wake up , and the crank on my phone was crush through the LCD and it would n’t plow on . I ca n’t hark back just which party killed my phone , or what mysterious impact do it to die . But it was maybe the Nerf warreader meetupwhere this photo was taken :

Yeah , that front about right .
iPhone 4 (#2)
January 2012- June 2012
I got dump in 2011 , and it took me over a class to really move on . It require a lot of alcohol get there . When I was in conclusion ready , after a day of the month when everything was going right , I close my eyes and went for the kiss and cut down through the wrought branding iron logic gate I was lean on and threw my phone straight at the ground . Technically the headphone worked for a while after that , but it was shedding glass at all time so affecting it was a hazard . Eventually , the touchscreen terminate working altogether .
iPhone 4 (#3)
June 2012 – July 2012
This phone was n’t really mine . It was an spare handset that was passed around the Gizmodo stave whenever somebody needed a temporary telephone set . It was already in rough contour ; the power push scantily worked so you could n’t really put the headphone to sleep . The electric battery only keep its armorial bearing for about half a day . I managed to make thing worse by dropping it almost immediately , opening a gash in the glass back that will the guts exposed . finally the battery just stopped carrying charge altogether . I used it for a total of about a calendar month .
iPhone 5S
September 2013 - August 2014
After murdering three iPhones in less than a year , I decided I was n’t go to get another one for a while . Plus , I ’m a gadget blogger , and I wanted to get acquainted with the other operating system of rules besides the iOS platform I knew . So I split the next class between different phones as they reach through the position , including a Nexus 4 , an HTC One , and a Nokia Lumia 1020 . I unload all of those phones , but somehow I never managed to destroy them .
I purchase an iPhone fivesome the sidereal day it follow out . I think I had learned my lesson . But even if the construction of the iPhone 5S was better than the build of its harbinger , my fresh speech sound seemed to get along worse than any of the others . I start torturing it almost immediately . Within a month all of the niche were slenderly crumpled . By the end of the year , the screen had a crack . By the spring , I ’d chipped off the glass in the turning point exposing the front - facing television camera . A all dissimilar accident leave a blob of utter picture element floating around the top right nook , too .

I think in the end my iPhone 5S just gave up on me . After repay to my desk from a coffee fracture , I find it dangling from its lightning cable system , and just hardly concern the floor . I thought for a second that it was still alive . It was n’t . The earpiece hit the ground properly on a corner , ripping off the front glass board .
I could probably fix my broken iPhone , but for now , I ’m just using the Galaxy S5 . I feel like I need to compensate the terms for my carelessness .
Sometimes I look at the shiny iPhone 6 my coworkers own . It count beautiful . It ’s so alluring . But I ’m not going to buy one .

I know how that ends .
Image by Sam Woolley
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