Phone repairs can cost a small fortune. So why do we hurt the devices we love?

Dara Weinstein remembers the fateful moment like it was yesterday.

She had just finished filming a video on someone else’s phone and was turning a celebratory somersault when her iPhone 11 came loose from her back pocket and crashed to the floor. She landed right on top of it, shattering the screen.

A 24-year-old actor, writer and producer from New York City, Weinstein winced at the repair cost but got the screen fixed. 

Then a week later, she accidentally tossed her phone during a comedy sketch and cracked the screen again. This, she joked, was not the big break she had in mind. Again, she coughed up the money to fix it.

Until she upgrades to a new model, Weinstein says she has decided to live with an annoying black smudge that recently appeared on the top left of the screen after her phone took another unexpected tumble.

“I drop my phone every day,” she said. “It’s always a little broken.”

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We depend on our phones for everything. So why don’t we treat them better? Especially with the cost of repairs surging over the last six years.

We fish them out of the washing machine and the toilet. We splinter the screens during our commute, on errands, at Taylor Swift concerts and at Little League games. We clog the charging port with crud. Even that drop-resistant case and screen protector can’t save our pricey phones from our wanton carelessness. 

Broken phones, shattered screens

Nearly one-third of smartphone owners – 78 million Americans – damaged their phones in the past year, according to a new study shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

The most common repair is damaged screens (67%), according to the study by Allstate Protection Plans, a subsidiary of Allstate that hawks extended warranties.

Social media is rife with these sad tales of spider-veined screens.

Olivia Blodgett’s last phone – an iPhone 13 – survived some near misses before it, too, cracked.

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The 36-year-old travel blogger from Orange County, California, dropped it at a Muse concert while trying to juggle her phone and a beer and film a video. It also went flying when she was holding her long dress and her sandals and hiking up a sand dune in Death Valley National Park (at least that was a soft landing). She briefly dunked her phone in the warm ocean water when she boated to an island without a dock in Puerto Rico and had to walk to shore.

Her lucky streak ended while trying to spot dolphins on a ferry headed to Anacapa Island off the coast of Southern California. The water was choppy and the rocking of the boat knocked her phone out of her pocket. When it hit the deck, a giant crack snaked across the screen.

So Blodgett was thrilled last month when she upgraded to an iPhone 15 Pro. The thrill was gone in an instant. She dropped the new phone about 30 seconds after walking out of the Verizon store. Now the screen has a jagged fissure in the corner.

The shocking price of fixing a damaged phone

Our carelessness can be a real wallet-buster. The cost of screen repairs alone nearly tripled to $8.3 billion in 2023 from $3.4 billion in 2018, Allstate says.

And that can add up quickly. Americans have shelled out $149 billion on smartphone repairs and replacements since the debut of the iPhone in 2007. 

The average cost for repairs and replacements is spendy – $302 a pop – and doesn’t sit right with smartphone owners who underestimate how much it will cost. Nearly half – 47% – of Americans think fixing or swapping phones should cost about half that.

So more of us are putting off repairs and putting up with broken phones.

Nearly half of Americans say they would not fix a damaged smartphone that still functions. The top reason for putting off repairs: 39% said they can’t afford to fix their phone.

“Travel bloggers don’t make a ton of money, so I’ve just dealt with working on a cracked phone screen until I was eligible for a phone upgrade,” said Blodgett, who is thanking her lucky stars she bought insurance through Verizon before her phone’s fall. 

“I’ve never taken my phone to get repaired but plan to do so for this brand new phone,” she said.

Why do phone repairs cost so much?

In an age when we spend more on our devices whose life spans are shorter than ever, Kyle Wiens blames Big Tech, which has rigged the repair system against us, he says. He runs iFixit, which sells parts, tools and repair guides. 

The right-to-repair movement – which is working to make companies like Apple provide consumers with the parts, tools and technical know-how to repair their own devices – is slowly spreading across the country despite opposition from major tech companies. 

Oregon this week became the fourth state to pass legislation granting consumers the legal right to fix their gadgets, requiring manufacturers to give them the tools they need.

“I think people treat their phones reasonably carefully," Wiens said. "But it's an object made out of glass that you take in and out of your pocket 30 times a day. Of course, accidents will happen,” he said, adding, “I think the question is why they aren't easier and cheaper to fix.”

Chips, scratches: Why we aren't more careful with our phones

But until that happens, shouldn’t we be more kid gloves than all thumbs?

Research shows our carelessness is sometimes unconscious, like when we accidentally damage our phone to have an excuse to buy a newly released model.

But mostly it's just that our phones have become such an integral part of our lives, says Kristen Duke, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto.

“They no longer feel like expensive, fragile devices we have to protect," Duke said. "They just feel like part of our own bodies. We carry them everywhere we go.”

Our nonstop usage and growing numbness to their fragility mean "smartphones end up dropped, banged, smashed, and squished,” she said.

Last week while walking across the University of Texas at Austin campus, Adrian Ward, an associate professor of marketing, noticed that the vast majority of students had their phones in their hands, not in their pockets or backpacks.

“All of our phones have chips and scratches and bad battery life just because we use them so much,” he said. “I don’t think it’s evidence of lack of care. If anything it’s the opposite. It’s evidence of our inability to be away from our phones.”