SINGAPORE - If you have damaged your handphone in the toilet or bathroom, rest assured that you are not the only one stuck with a sticky mess.
An August 2015 survey, commissioned by American mobile device case maker OtterBox, found that a third of Singaporeans have damaged their phones in such septic settings.
One in 10 Singaporeans have also had a close encounter of the gross kind, with their phones unwittingly plummeting into the toilet bowl.
The State of our Smartphones report surveyed 2,500 smartphone owners from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Five hundred of the respondents were from Singapore.
The report also threw up other fun phone statistics, such as the fact that Singapore smartphone users are the most clumsy in the list of countries surveyed.
Respondents from Singapore were 10 per cent more likely to drop their smartphones on the floor, or have them slip out of their hands than other users.
Singapore's excellent public transport system also contributed to handphone fatalities, with a third of those surveyed admitting to damaging their phones while taking the bus or MRT.
Some other findings:
- 31 per cent of smartphone owners confessed to damaging their smartphones while walking along the street because they were not paying attention to their surroundings.
- 38 per cent of local users said their smartphone was likely to be damaged within the first three months of use.
- 41 per cent of local users said that they were currently using a damaged smartphone.
- At the time of damage, 80 per cent of local users believed that their smartphones had some form of case or protection.
But despite the overall klutziness, Singaporeans are tight-fisted when it comes to protecting their smartphones.
Users here spend an average of just US$19 (S$27) on smartphone cases, with a third of respondents unwilling to spend more than US$10.
Local users are also equally frugal when it comes to repairing their hundred-dollar devices. Seven in 10 would rather live with a cracked screen than pay to replace it, and four in 10 would not spend on handphone repairs at all.
