Category: Gadgets

A specialist insurer of devices have found that one third of Brits have accidentally broken their machines.

A specialist insurer of gadgets, Protect Your Bubble, has released data that has indicated that one third (33 percent) of people in the United Kingdom have broken their smartphones or tablets at some point.

Moreover, a large number of those individuals has attempted to fix the device on their own.

In fact, 53 percent of the people who had broken their gadgets had made some attempt to fix them. Among the most popular methods that were used for these repairs included Super Glue, which was the most popular at 38 percent, followed by strong adhesive tape at 30 percent, and then rubber bands at 18 percent.

Other less traditional methods of repair for these gadgets have also been used for emergency fixes.

Among those emergency methods for repairing gadgets included using Blu-Tack (also known as sticky-tack), which was used by 12 percent of the respondents to the survey, as well as hair ties among 9 percent of the participants, and even chewing gum in 5 percent of the cases. Men were far more likely than women to attempt to repair their own device.

Fifty nine percent of the male respondents had tried to fix their own gadgets, whereas only 46 percent of the women had attempted to do so. The main reason that people try to fix their own devices – as was the case among 41 percent of the respondents – was that professional repairs cost far too much. That said, 24 percent of the survey respondents said that they were willing to put up with the damage to their devices. Another 15 percent said that they wanted to be able to make do with their device until their mobile contract was up for renewal so that they would be entitled to a new one.

Men have a likelihood that is 6 times higher than women for breaking their phones or tablets by sitting down onto them. However, women are four times more likely than men to cause damage to their gadgets as a result of using them while in the bath.

Though the new iPhones may be leaving the numbers from previous crowds in the dust, actual sales are unknown.

Critics of the latest Apple gadgets that have been released – the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C – were left with raised brows as the opening weekend brought record crowds beginning on Friday night.

However, it is not yet known whether Apple has managed to break the 5 million sales record from last year.

Despite the fact that many consumers and reviewers seemed disappointed, or nonplussed at best, with the unveiling of the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C, this didn’t stop loyal Apple fans from coming out in massive droves to line up to be among the first to purchase these latest gadgets. Initial tallies that were collected by Gene Munster, an analyst from Piper Jaffray, when compared to last year’s opening weekend crowds, the lines in three major cities (which included San Francisco and New York City), were equal to, or slightly higher.

These figures suggest that a larger number of people may be lining up to buy the newest Apple gadgets.

As much as analysts are counting the number of people in the lineups to purchase these gadgets, the real mystery – whether or not the 5 million units sold mark from last year has been beaten during the first weekend – has yet to be solved. That said, if the numbers are released by the company, it won’t be too long before they’re out. This is particularly true if Apple has beaten its record, as it surely won’t want to withhold information about such positive gains.

As of the time that this article was written, only the preorders data has been released by the company, regarding its iPhone 5C gadgets which were preordered.

Apple has kept analysts further in the dark than it has in previous years. In the past, early peeks at data regarding the first 24 hours of preorders were made available. However, with this latest release of iPhone gadgets, this was not the case, as only the iPHone 5C was made available for presale and that information was held onto for the full opening weekend. Although that data wouldn’t provide a thorough understanding of what sales figures could be expected for both of the new devices at once, it would have provided a hint, at the very least.

That said, this lack of data regarding the presales and sales of the two new gadgets still hasn’t stopped Wall Street from making guesses.