Taller people more likely to suffer from cracked phone screens?

by philg

Business question: Should you locate your next “tall clothing” store next to a phone repair shop?

Fortunately for those of us who want to do autorotations in a helicopter, the potential energy of an object goes up linearly with height. This may be unfortunate, however, for phone ownership by the tall.

The chance of a phone screen breaking seems to be highly non-linear as a function of energy or height. A phone will never break when dropped from a height of 1 inch, for example, but it will always shatter if dropped from a height of 1 mile. What if there is Silicon Valley-style hockey-stick growth in the chance of breakage starting right about 5′ above the ground. We should then expect people who are 6′ tall to have quite a few more cracked screens (phones dropped from ear height) than do people who are 5′ tall.

Readers: What do you think? Is there likely a correlation? Should Verizon and Apple try not to sell insurance to anyone tall who shows up in a store? Charge higher rates for customers identifying as “men” (taller on average)?

7 thoughts on “Taller people more likely to suffer from cracked phone screens?”

  1. I don’t think that being tall has anything to do with it. I’m >6ft and have only broken one screen in the last 10 years. It probably has more to do with young kids using their parent’s phone, clumsy hands, choosing a sub-standard case based more on style than protection.

  2. I have noticed it doesn’t matter if you drop them from a boat (3 so far, usually while walking around the boat or trailer with no hands to spare).

  3. Research shows that shorter people tend to throw their phone a lot more. But that is nothing compared to what the phone insurance actuaries term “buttocks breakage.” For unknown reasons, shorter people tend to carry their phone in a rear pocket of tight fitting pants, then go to Starbucks and sit in an unupholstered chair, thus shattering the screen. It’s a mystery. So despite gravitational risk, taller people are safer bets.

  4. Taller people, statistically, walk into low hanging objects (especially when they’re using their cellphones) more often and the ensuing fall causes a higher rate of breakage. That’s what my people tell me.

  6. Like the “two left feet” or the “green thumb”, I suspect there’s the equivalent for phone screens. I’ve had 4 iPhones since 2007, never used a case or screen protector and only had a hairline crack on my original iPhone (because of a whole in my pocket that left the phone free to slide down my leg and fly out near my ankle as I walked).

    It baffles me how people crack and shatter phone screens, some even with cases. I don’t think it’s related to the person’s height. But I also don’t have kids or pets!

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