It was a beautiful October wedding in 2015. The bride wore a princess-inspired ballgown and strolled down the outdoor aisle on the arm of her tuxedoed father, my husband’s cousin. I was glad to have my iPhone 5 to snap some photos. We don’t get to Arizona often, since it’s 1,500 miles away from our Seattle home.
But while standing around outside chit-chatting before the reception, I made the mistake of letting my 7-year-old daughter borrow my fairly new phone to play Plants vs. Zombies. CRASH! It slipped through her fingers and smashed to the hot sidewalk. Now, it was my phone that was the zombie.
Right up until I flipped the damaged phone over, I told myself maybe it wouldn’t be that bad — I’ve dropped my phone dozens of times, and generally, it lives to see another day.
Hey, we all gotta go sometime. This was my phone’s time. The screen was a shattered mess. That Arizona cement does not play. Just touching the screen stabbed my finger with a tiny shard of glass.
Cracked screens are still the most common way phones are damaged, according to a survey this month by Allstate Protection Plans. In the last year alone, people in the US have collectively spent more than $17 billion repairing or replacing their phones.
And while Apple has made huge strides in the technology onboard the iPhone over the years, their durability is still a thing of nightmares: Allstate’s 6-foot drop test found that the latest model, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, shattered on impact with a sidewalk.
Since it’s such a common occurrence, there are a few ways you can prepare for a broken iPhone, from AppleCare Plus to third-party insurers. Here’s what I did, and some other ways to handle a shattered phone.
The solution
When my iPhone hit the sidewalk, I figured I was done for. My phone addiction was going to have to get put on hold until we flew back home and I had the time to figure out my next steps.
I was wrong. My husband, the tech geek in our household, scoffed at the idea of waiting several…
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