I Am One of the Lucky Ones ⇥ thetypist.com

“The Typist” shares their story of why they use a case on their iPhone, and it’s really good. It’s the main link for this post, but I can’t quote anything from it because it’ll spoil everything.

Allow me to share one of my stories, though. In summer 2012, I was walking through Century Gardens when I received an email that I just had to check. I started skimming the email on my iPhone 4S when my foot got caught on a bit of uneven brickwork and my phone was launched into space. I fumbled to catch it and didn’t get a good grip on it, so it flew out of my hand, bounced on a rock, and fell straight into the water feature in the park with the requisite cartoonish bloop. I looked in and it had fallen in screen upwards, and I could read my email through the water. I stepped in, grabbed my phone, and immediately tried to turn it off.¹ For some reason, it powered itself back on — a worrying sign.

As soon as I got home, I dropped it into a bag of rice and left it overnight. The following morning, I pulled it out and checked it out. Aside from a few nicks and bumps on the antenna, there was almost no damage. The only major issue was that some sounds weren’t playing through the internal speaker. Here’s a fun test for you, reader: under what conditions would an iPhone play all system noises out of its speaker after being locked for a couple of minutes, but would only do so for a few seconds? Under what condition would the Siri noise always play through the internal speaker, but almost no other system sounds would be audible, despite the phone not being in silent mode?

(dramatic pause)

Answer: when the phone thinks it’s playing audio through the dock connector. It turns out that the dock connector’s audio out pin sits beside one of the ground pins, and these were shorting out. A quick brush with a little bit of rubbing alcohol and my phone worked as good as new for two more years, before I replaced it with a 5S. I still don’t use a case.

I’m usually fairly careful, but when I screw up, I really screw up. I have also rolled my DSLR down a very, very steep hill. Yet, like my iPhone, it emerged pretty much unscathed. I am far too lucky.