This holiday season, let's talk about the gadgets that are no longer with us, not because they were bad or obsolete, but because they met their demise in a delightfully destructive way.
These gadgets were broken without meaning. Probably. Helen is related.
This was a fun conversation that we started out with, and we are bringing a more polished version to you. Feel free to tell your own stories in the comments.
The Canon Rebel T5 is a Canon.
I have a cat. He is very particular about when he gets fed. He doesn't like eating alone and so he makes us sit with him as he eats. I tried to put him on a diet after our vet told us that he was too young to be fat.
In response, Pablo began to knock things off high places. The dirt from the plants' pots was spilling on the floor. Some mugs were lost. I used to take product shots with my camera, which hurt the most. The thing that helps me pay for his food.
The day before, Pablo was upset about his diet. He was told to wait. I needed a bathroom break and was shooting a wristwatch. He was not happy. I left it on the counter because I thought my cat wouldn't jump up to spite me. He did. I heard the crash from the bathroom, and he was sitting there, probably playing Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" in his cat brain. My camera was destroyed. Victoria Song now feeds him when he wants.
:noupscale is a file on thechorusasset.com.
He eats when he wants.
The photo was taken by Victoria Song.
The iPhone 5 is new.
I would have told anyone I had never broken a phone. I broke the same phone twice. I don't remember how I broke my phone. I think I dropped it at work. I remember people wincing and me trying to downplay the significance of the shattering.
I got the money to fix the phone in time for my mom to visit. We went to Ikea on the second day to look at furniture that I could not afford. My mom said I looked tired. I took my phone out of my pocket as we left the store. My dumb ass was too tired to hold onto the expensive device I had just pulled from my pocket. The phone flew through the air and landed on the pavement, so loud a family walking by looked on with sympathy.
Less than 12 hours after I had had my phone fixed, it broke. My mom said I needed to sleep.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
The original Vive.
The photo was taken by James Bareham.
The Vive is from the company,HTC.
I lent the original Vive headset from The Verge to the Panorama music festival in the summer of 2016 when virtual reality systems had months-long waiting lists. This is how I learned about the sunspots.
I did not get to see The Arcade Fire.
The handspring Visor has something on it.
One regret is that the Handspring Visor isn't the original device, it's still a working one. The mine was replaced at an Ohio Best Buy because of the generous early 2000s extended warranty plan.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
The Handspring Visor is still going strong.
The photo was taken by Richard Lawler.
Why did I need a Handspring Visor? The PalmOS-powered devices are still running 20 years later, as evidenced by the fact that mine is still running. My original device couldn't survive being in my back pocket when I got slammed into a table. Anyone who has ever been to Court St. in Athens knows why.
The K480 is a multi- device keyboard.
I am terrified of spiders. I spent an entire night standing outside in the cold in my pajamas in an unsafe neighborhood because I found one on my pillow. I don't know why my brain registered a spider as more of a threat to my life than potential murderers, but there you go.
Rationality flew out the window when a spider crawled on my hands while I typed on my keyboard. I ran out of my room after throwing my keyboard at the wall. After I summoned the strength to walk back into my room, I sprayed everything, including my keyboard, hair spray, and perfume to cover the other awful smells. The keyboard died and it was all for nothing. I stopped sleeping in my room after I found the spider near my bed.
MacBook
In the winter of 2010/2011, my MacBook's hard drive died for the second time in less than four years. It made sense for me to replace the drive myself because the laptop was no longer under warranty. A friend of mine lived down the street and he had a fancy screwdriver that he needed to remove the drive's housing. After getting a new drive in the mail, I put on a coat, grabbed my laptop, and walked a block through the snow to get to his house.
The fix was simple: remove the battery, remove the housing, swap the unit in, and put everything back in place. I was walking the block back home with my laptop in hand. I remember crossing the street and hopping onto the curb.
I landed on a patch of black ice when I fell sideways.
The plastic on the back of the laptop exploded as it landed, creating a thick silver bar between its body and screen. The screen was attached to the left and center portions of the hinge.
It still worked. It felt like the laptop could break in two. It did not survive my last semester of college. I bought a new MacBook Air on the very first day it was refreshed.
A work-issued phone.
When I started writing about consumer technology, the world was new, the world was growing, and companies still gave their employees the same old phones as before. I lived a two-phone lifestyle for a while in my 20s because I worked for such a company. My flip phone couldn't do things like check Facebook and search for stuff. All work related.
You haven't really lived until you sobbed openly at the baggage claim, typing out apology emails on your phone's physical keyboard for accidentally breaking an embargo. That is another story.
I was in my early 20s, and I had a lot of feelings. I could leave home after 8PM on a weeknight, get drunk at a karaoke night, and still work the next morning. I came home from a night of partying and felt very emotional about something I don't remember. It was very upsetting and I had to take off my coat and throw it on the floor. My phone was in my pocket.
If I had lived with carpeting, this would have been fine. I lived in an old can factory that was converted into apartments with cement floors. I went from being sad and drunk to being sad and drunk with a broken phone after my coat hit the floor. If I remember correctly, they just sent me a new one without asking any questions after I told work that my phone broke. I didn't learn anything from this experience.
The 3a and 3a XL are the only ones.
I didn't need a case for my phone. The early bombproof plastic phones were impervious to break, and I kept a firm grip on my glass phones. I decided to slap a case on my new phone after I went on a beautiful island vacation with my family.
Noupscale is a file on thechorusasset.com.
Was my picture worth it?
The photo was taken by Sean Hollister.
When I saw the gorgeous rainbow overhead, I was happy that I could take my phone with me into the crystal-clear Lahaina waters. I realized my phone case was hurting more than it was helping after I waded back to land and started walking to the car. I fumbled after yanking it out. My phone hit the pavement screen-side down.
The phone that broke was my most protected phone yet. I got it half-off, at least I didn't pay full price.
I am afraid that I have a new Pixel 3 breakage story. I used one as my personal phone for 22 months before it died. I am almost certain that it overheated because it was running its auto-transcription software continuously for almost two hours while sitting in a case and charging. It wasn't dramatic, but it was a useful reminder that there are limits to what a phone can do.
I also broke a phone. I ordered it around Black Friday. I used to keep my phones bare, but my wife persuaded me to protect it with a case, since the phone was getting expensive around the time I was buying it. I used a thick clear-Silicone case to start, but later swapped it for a fabric case.
In the summer of 2020, I will be working from home, I will slide the phone into my back pocket, and my partner will be next to me, so we both get to watch the sad scene. I pick it up to see a small crack across the full width of the screen.
I had dropped my phone many times before, but this one hit it just right. I tried covering up the crack with a glass screen protectors, but it was never the same. I keep it as a reminder to take group selfies with it.
It started innocently. My nephew wanted to give me a present, so I hid my phone under my arm to look for him. I decided to ignore my instincts and put on a hoodie with a pocket for my phone.
I lost all sense when my nephew told me to bring his stuffed dog to New York. I received a present with two arms. I heard a loud noise and saw my Purplish 3a XL on the marble floor. I picked up my phone and shooed him away, and I swore under my breath.
It was a big blow to my beloved Pixel. I wasn't in Canada long enough to get the screen repaired, so the cost of a replacement screen made sense for a budget phone. My Canadian phone was incompatible with my US phone. Don't make the same mistake as me, kids, get a case, always travel with more than one phone, and use a damn pocket.
The PSX console.
This is not an accident. It was devastating. In the two years after I received the PS1, I played so many video games that the CD-ROM holder in my PS1 broke. The Legend of Dragoon, Dino Crisis 2, Tenchu 1 and 2, Um Jammer Lammy, and the Spyro trilogy all got too much playtime.
I remember that mechanism well. The disc was kept in place with a few small ball bearings. It had an orange rubber band that was wedged inside of the plastic.
I glued all of the fragile plastic pieces together, as the idea of it being a cheap, easy-to-replace part existed outside of my nine-year-old brain. I thought I would have to get a new console. One day, I was playing a game and it broke apart into several pieces while the console was running. It was the end of my PSX days.
:noupscale is a file on thechorusasset.com
The death happened on the floor of the store.
The photo was taken by Jen Pattison Tuohy.
The iPad first-gen.
My first iPad was a gift from my husband to celebrate the birth of our daughter. It was the beginning of my journey into the smart home and the best gift you could give a person who spent six hours of every day watching a baby. I made the mistake of lending it to my son when we were at the store with two kids. He promised he would be good and I needed a distraction so I could focus on my shopping list.
I heard the sound of glass meeting concrete as my iPad landed on the floor. I received a new iPad Mini last month and haven't owned an iPad since. It is good to be back.
Noupscale is a file on thechorusasset.com.
The car is full of water. My good camera was taking a swim inside the car, and the quality of the iPhone 6S was poor.
The photo was taken by Mitchell Clark.
The D500 is a Nikon.
I parked my car at the top of a hill next to a water drain to make sure I had everything in my car. The back seat was flooded with a few inches of swampy water because that didn't pan out. It was enough to submerge the new DSLR I had just bought.
The D500 was built like a tank but didn't survive the night. As a film student, I was bent out of shape about losing my camera than my transportation.
Thankfully, the camera was willing to repair it for around $400, which meant replacing most of the internal components. Although I continued to endanger my camera and car by taking pictures in pools and off-roading through ponds, both survived long enough to make their way to new, hopefully more careful owners.
The HUAWEI mate 10 pro
One of my favorite places to find lobster is a place called Abbott's, which is a few miles south of Mystic, Conn. You place your order at a window, wait until they call your name, and then carry your tray full of food out on the lawn.
We had just parked after a long drive and were walking to the restaurant when I took my phone out of the car and put it in my head. I started looking through my backpack. I put it in an external pocket in that backpack, but it slipped out and crashed onto the ground as I searched. Since the ground was made of loose gravel, the case I had around my phone was useless. The top area of my screen was decorated by a spiderweb of cracks, when I picked it up. I didn't like my lobster that evening.
It can be hard to get a screen replaced on a phone that isn't an Apple or a SAMSUNG. I couldn't justify buying another phone since the phone still worked. I used screen protectors for a year to keep that display from getting worse, but I broke it and bought a new one.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
Definitely not done on purpose.
The photo was taken by Helen Havlak.
The 4th film in the film series, called Pixel 4.
I have hated my phone since I bought it. I should have listened to the review that pointed out the horrible battery life and huge top bezel. Instead, I swapped my phone for a face unlock, just in time for a global epidemic. It's not fun to enter an 8-digit password when shopping.
My partner accused me of doing it deliberately when I accidentally ran my dad's car over with my Pixel 4. So unjust! The screen is splintering and random, and I am going to get rid of it. At least the card survived. I plan to use my dad's old phone until I can get the new one.
The Nissan Leaf is a car.
I think it is safe to say that electric cars are just devices that take you places. I traded in my used Nissan Leaf S for a fully loaded Nissan Leaf SL, because I wanted a pure EV that I wouldn't have to worry about range anxiety. It had an app to locate where it was parked, a Bose sound system, and premium materials.
Only a Leaf owner can say that, after only six months of driving, it met its demise when a vehicle entered my lane from a construction site. It was my fault because I couldn't brake in time. Thankfully, my Nissan Leaf leaves behind two loving owners and a properly restrained dog.
Noupscale is a file onchorusasset.com.
A Nissan Leaf has been destroyed.
The photo was taken by Umar Shakir.
We want to hear your stories as well, so please leave a comment below. If you like this sort of thing, we have a feeling that you would like our worst tech flops of the decade, our favorite gadgets of the past 10 years, and the worst devices we have ever touched.
