(GIVEAWAY OVER! Winner has been contacted and will be announced soon!)
Hey there.
Ever dropped your phone? In water? Yeah, me neither (LIES.)
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a phone that could survive a little swim? You know, just in case?
The Rugby Smart is also dustproof, water resistant (1 m for 30 minutes) and can handle extreme weather conditions. It’s light, feels good and the touchscreen is super responsive, not to mention I love me some AT&T 4G.
I’m giving a Samsung Rugby Smart Phone away to one commenter, just tell me your phone-y tale of woe (not phoney like a lie, phoney like a phone.) Contest will run through Monday April 23rd at Midnight EST. Winner will be contacted by email and have 24 hours to respond.
Good luck!
Disclosure: I was provided with a Samsung Rugby Smart phone with 30 days of stellar AT&T service to facilitate in my review. I have been compensated for my time, not for promoting a particular product and opinions are my own, as usual.
making unbreakable - formerly moosh in indy. 
Honestly, I myself have never had a phone issue except dropping it on carpet. My husband, however, had his phone in his shirt pocket, leaned forward to flush the toilet, and in it went! lol He grabbed it before it went into the plumbing. ewww Great giveaway…thanks!!
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Scene: Kid #1. Age 2.
It started as your average day…and then Kid #1 decides to take his sippy cup of water and dump it on my laptop.
I’m freaking out, hubs is figuring out how to keep it from frying when I notice that Kid #1 used this time to grab my phone and put it in the cat’s water bowl.
Huh? He never did anything like that before–or again! Just weird. The laptop was saved…but the same can’t be said for the phone.
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Stop it. You’re so pretty and look so happy….I don’t need a phone just wanted to stalk you.
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@Amanda Ryan, Why don’t you need a phone AMANDA? 😉
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@Casey, I totally agree with Amanda. You do look pretty! And happy! And like you need a play date with me and my girls once they are done being sickly contagious little bodies. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty.
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The worst phone story I have is that I was forced to get a new one years ago because the technology in my phone wouldn’t work anymore because it was so old. And I’m fairly certain I’m on the same road again with my current phone…
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does it weird you out if I just decide to comment and tell you that you are a very pretty lady? I promise I’m happily married and don’t like girls but sometimes we girls need to tell each other when it comes into our heads! We don’t tell each other enough the positive truth about each other! We are our own worst enemies! Have a great weekend…and I’m kinda happy with my iphone waterproof or not…
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The phone before last decided that it’s screen didn’t want to work anymore and went completely blank, luckily I could still text. My last phone (different model) did much the same thing but I couldn’t use it after the screen went blank. My current phone is fastly starting to get really weird. Hopefully it stays working until I do get a new one. =)
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HAHAHA!!! i just read Amanda’s comment! Didn’t read it before I commented. So now, you must know it’s true! Two people agree! Pretty and happy! YEAAA!!!! Happy Happy Day! P.S. I still wouldn’t trade my iphone for anything else.
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@heather bays, HA! Amanda won my last phone giveaway! I had to be on local TV today so I decided to get all lacquered and polished up. It’s a rare thing, I assure you.
Thank you so much, and I’m just going to go ahead and say perhaps you haven’t had the right Android experience yet. I am totally loyal to mine (and AT&T and that’s not even a paid endorsement.)
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OMG…I need a new phone to give my teen. Seems like he destroys his more often than he changes his underwear. In the last 2 weeks I have received the following text msgs…”my lock button is stuck” “my camera is all scratched” and just last night “I cracked my screen”…he needs indestructible more than he needs clean underwear
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Make that three of us ogling your hawtness. It’s attention-grabbing 🙂
As far as phones… I’m still using the same type flip phone that I got in 2004, although I replaced it once (with the same model). My husband, on the other hand, goes through [the same] phones like they’re disposable. The latest one got replaced because all the plastic around the charging hole broke off, so it wouldn’t hold the charger to the phone. The one prior to that, I’m pretty sure he broke they keypad off.
I do have a 2yo and a 4yo and they’re much better with the phone than the 42yo is…
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Oh, and I’ve always done fine with AT&T. I know some folks complain about their connections, but AT&T has worked fine for me since I first switched (same time I got this current Samsung flip phone).
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A Motorola Rizer (sp????) was a chew toy, until it stopped working. That’s the day that I discovered teh little circle under the battery that indicates whether a phone has gotten wet.
Warranty voided.
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A friend of mine once gave me a sample of hair product to try, and on the drive home it leaked all over the inside of my purse and everything in it–including my phone. Thankfully I was able to wipe off the phone and it still worked! (But the purse was ruined, so I got a new one out of it. Score!)
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Well, it’s not MY tale of woe but my husband’s. He put on his swim trunks before we went to the pool and forgot it was in there…
I’m sure you can predict where the story goes from here…
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I have had my phone now for a year. It went through a fire in July, and sprayed by fire hoses. Drop it in a bag of rice, and Taadaa is just like new. Well if new means glitched out all the time. No worries toddler to the rescue. She will make it better, faster, stronger.
2 year olds are great for mimicking what they see. You see me washing dishes, so naturally you want to wash your binky, your noisy helicopter abc toy, my phone.
You take a bath with all these other great toys my awesome toddler. Naturally you should also throw my phone in the bathtub before I put you in for your bath. It is the only logical thing to do.
Needless to say I always have my “phone” bag of rice on standby.
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@Stephanie, I wish I could like comments.
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@Casey, 🙂 My life is full of adventure. I would trade that for nothing.
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The worst my phone has been through was when my son was about 11 months old and got a hold of my phone. I was in the kitchen cooking and I could see his back and what looked like him just gnawing on a toy. A few minutes later I realized it was my phone and it was SOAKED in drool! I had to take it apart and put it in rice. Ever since then when it is turned on for too long it starts to smell like an electric fire kinda smell, but it still works lol!
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Oooh, a new phone would be so very lovely. I, too, am android-loyal and AT&T-loyal. I have dropped various phones of mine in puddles, toilets (note to self: take the phone out of your back pocket before using the restroom), bathtubs, kitchen sinks, as well as garbage cans. I can’t take the credit for all of the above, as my 4yo and 7yo are convinced that the phone actually belongs to them. I’m half convinced of that myself.
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My daughter when she was 8mo took my phone in the bathroom, she didn’t drop it in the toilet she dump it in there voluntary, wash it, bathes it. It was like she was bathing a baby. She was proud of it too when Handl it to me with a big grin on her face. I blow dry it n it survive, the rest of its lifespan I never bought it close to my face LOL used a headset. LOL
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I got a Samsung Impression, because I’m a texting fiend. I needed something that was faster than hitting 1-1-1 just to get a letter hehe
So, I have it for a few months, we go to Indiana to see my parents. While visiting my grandparents, and putting the kids in the truck, I stick it on the roof of the truck. I never do that. So, we drive off. I didn’t realize it was missing for almost 2 hours, and then we go looking for it.
The slider phone is in 3 pieces: the main part of the phone, the battery, and the back. No scratches on the screen, because of a screen protector, and just a few rock dings in the battery. Otherwise, it ran just as good as it did before, minus a few hiccups with the keyboard and typing random letters 2-4 times extra.
I get a new phone, and pass the IMpression to my husband. We’re like “Hey, we should look at new phones for you soon. You’ve been out of contract for a couple years”. That was the kiss of death. We go visit some friends, because my SIL took the kids overnight. He’s getting out of the truck, and *CHINK* *crash* the phone falls to the ground. Less than a foot, and it’s in three pieces again. Only this time, the keyboard is completely removed.
The irony? The phone still worked. He could get calls. The phone would ring. The alarm would go off. We just couldn’t do anything about it because we couldn’t use the screen.
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I had the tiniest flip phone ever and it came to its demise during a phone call with my mother. She made me angry and the phone went flying into the door frame at work. The flip part detached and poor tiny $200 phone was gone. Thanks mom.
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I had my brand new Iphone in my back pocket and it slipped out into the toilet when i went to the bathroom. I had just cleaned the bathroom and it was before I had gone so I fished it out and took it to the apple store. I had to pay 160$ for a new one. I have horrible luck with phones. That is only the last phone I had to get. I have been through so many phones.
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I’m gonna use what happened to my SIL bc it’s a better story than anything that’s happened to any of my phones.
We were out shopping when she decided to go to the restroom..ummm not a pee break if you know what I mean. Her phone was in her back pocket and as she stood up in fell in the toilet!! In a impulse reaction she fished it out of the toilet…yes out of the unflushed toilet!!
We (and I use that term lightly) tried to clean it up at the store and went home and soaked it in a bag of rice. Rice may help phones dunked in water, but not, ahem, other items that were in the water.
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wow, I just read that again and I can’t believe I told that story outloud to others! 🙂
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I work with special needs kids, and often let them play a game on my phone as a reward. Spaghetti, neon sharpie, mud, and a swimming pool have all been culprits!
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My daughter climbed into my bed one night and in the process knocked my water cup over right onto my new iPhone and my iPod touch!! I keep an extra bag of rice on hand just for electronics so I tore off the cases and buried them in the rice and went back to sleep – this was about 1 AM. I left them in for a solid day and they came out ok. Yesterday my daughter wanted to listen to her playlist while in the tub (we have a waterproof shower radio with an ipod dock!) and I couldn’t get the case off so I gave it to my husband and he proceeded to drop it in his cup of Coke as he was trying to get the case open! Got the case off and right into the bag of rice. It works fine today! Whew!!
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Well. A few months ago my weekend began by me trying to bow out of a job on Thursday evening. In response I got, a very rude email back from my boss. The next day, I wrecked my car. Saturday evening my computer got knocked and the motherboard had to be replaced. Did I tell you I’m a design student and had part one of my capstone project due the following week?
I thought life was calming down, and I spent 12 hour days in the computer labs at school. Then Tuesday morning, I was leaving late for internship, threw my travel mug in my purse, along with my phone. Only, I put the lid on wrong.
10 minutes later I reached in for my phone and found it floating in 16 ounces of Earl Grey tea, with Cream and Sugar.
Rice didn’t work (possibly because I was so nerve-wracked at this point I kept pulling it out to check it and the electricity really did ruin it). For the next few days, I just giggled hysterically whenever I thought of my last week.
I have my mom’s old phone at the moment. It works…more or less. I can text, mostly. The reception isn’t terrible. It does have a camera, but from a design standpoint – i nearly cry at the resolution.
Will I die without a new phone? Naw. Would it make me sing with joy to have a phone durable enough to withstand my accident-prone ways? A phone that might even take pictures I can use post-graduation to communicate with my colleagues? A phone that *EEK* I could use to capture my nieces singing and send to their other aunts? Oh, my YES!!
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my phone once fell out of my lab coat pocket into the trash, which wouldn’t be too bad if I was a vet and the trash can wasn’t at the hospital. Our trashcans aren’t the nicest thing to have to root around in. Lots of disinfectant. Lots.
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My phone was chewed by my toddler. The phone before that was chewed by my cat. I’d like the next phone to be chew-proof please.
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My in-laws own a boat that they keep on the Potomac (DC). My husband and I went with them and a friend for a day of swimming and relaxation on the boat. I had a beautiful watermelon colored tote bag that lacked a zipper with my towel, sunscreen and my phone right on top. I set it down on the dock while we were loading things in and my father in law knocked it over. My cell phone (the only thing that fell out) bounced on the dock and slipped into the water just as a wave knocked the boat away from the dock. It was perfect timing.
So my husband and our friend spent the next twenty mins in the water next to the dock diving down trying to find it. Just as we were ready to give up a guy came over with a net and after a few tries they managed to fish it out of the river.
We layed it in the sun with the battery out for the day and it actually worked so I sent it back and they gave me a new one for free because it was under warranty.
My husband still warns me every time we get on the boat that he will never do that again so be careful. I love that I can be way more destructive than my kids!
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I drop my phone ALL THE TIME – and now, with a baby, so does she! It probably gets dropped upwards of 10x/day – and “shatters” each time. Back off, battery out, etc. But it always turns back on! So, that’s something!
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I’ve been called clumsy, a klutz, accident prone, blah blah blah, so as careful as I try to be with my phone and other electronics, I pretty much always drop them or do something else stupid with them. A Heather-proof phone would be awesome!
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(1) The EnV with verizon, ended up at the bottom of a toilet in a public bathroom (thats when I stopped keeping my phone in my back pocket). I actually retrieved it (ewwwwe) and it survived for a few more months!
(2) The motorola Razr with verizon (special edition valentines day pink!) ended up under the foot of my horse (last time I took a cell phone riding with me!)
(3) Iphone 3 with at&t I left on the edge of the tub for a few minutes, the cat knocked it in moments later and while looking for it hubby turned on the shower to start warming up! Moments later it was a goner…
(4) The original Google phone, the Nexus One ended up in my back pocket (several years after incident #1, apparently I forgot my lesson) as I was going down a flight of stairs I missed a step and slid the rest of the way down on my touchy, my butt along with my phone hit the edge of every step on the way down. A cracked screen in addition to several other broken components 😦
Thats it! I’m on an iphone 4s now but I’d love to try out something invincible!
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IN basic training I borrowed a girl’s cell phone which she had smuggled in. I talked to a boy back home when I should have been sleeping. I told her it would be a 5 minute call, but it went WAY longer than that. This was way back in the days of roaming. Well, I kinda racked up a HUGE bill for this girl. Her mom, who was paying the bill, wasn’t too happy to see a $200+ charge on it.
Whoops!
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Phone + back pocket+ public toilet= water damaged phone!! Also leads to mental anguish of do I flush first or grab first??
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I got a good one!
I was driving in my Blue Old SportTrac and have always kept a red solo cup of water to drink in the cup holder on my way to work in the summer mornings. I got about 1/2 way thru that cup of water and left it in there to dispose of later on that day. My work day ended, I hop in the truck and while holding my cell phone, I went to turn up the radio and yep, you guessed it….gravity got the best of me and I accidentally dropped it right into the cup of water I had sitting there. It was dead in an instant. That’s what I get for trying to multitask! Then again, not as bad as when I washed one in the washer machine years before! 😉
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To say that my phone stinks would be, well, a complete understatement. Not only is it one of the cheapest Samsung flip phones available, it has been dropped, kicked, ran over with kids bicycles, and ran through the washer and dryer (oppppps!). Most days when talking on it, I am unable to hear or be heard an intermitten times throughout the conversation. We’re saving for a new one, so man, oh man, would I love a new one.
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My husband liked to take photos & video on his phone, but was not good at transferring them to our computer. He used his phone to take the first pictures after our youngest was born. A few months later I was doing laundry and heard a thump, thump, thump in the dryer. It was his phone & I cried at the thought of all those precious photos gone.
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My phone screen needed to be cleaned, so being the smart person that I am; I decided to use some Lysol disinfectant to clean my phone. The directions on the Lysol said that to kill germs you need to spray the object and let it sit for ten minutes. So I sprayed my phone, walked away and came back ten minutes later. Bad idea! The Lysol got inside my phone. I tried putting my phone in a bag of rice, but it didn’t work very well. My screen is dark (lots of water spots) and the camera will only take blurry pictures.
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So Danny and I renewed our phone contract last year which meant getting new phones. We were super poor (poorer after law school? YOU BET) and i ended up choosing refurbished phones. Three months later he got a fabulous new job and they bought him an iPhone. My phone took a toilet swim so it was good that I could take Danny’s phone. But. It’s dying. You know how the screen of any phone should shut off after 10 seconds of not being used? Mine will not. No matter what I do so I have to have it plugged in constantly. Bla bla bla, my phone situation makes me cry (especially because we don’t have a landline) and I can’t upgrade for 6 more months. So yeah, a free Tiffany and Ava-proof phone would be amazing.
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@Tiffany, Also, to further persuade you, I just need you to picture me, in the corner by our awkwardly placed outlet, trying to listen to voicemails on my dying phone while it’s charging. Then notice my husband, sitting on the couch watching ESPN, while he gleefully emails, texts, plays Words with Friends, and checks NFL Draft news all at once (the only time he can effectively multitask). He pities me, dangling from the end of a way-too-short charger chord, but mostly? He enjoys my inferior technological status. HELP ME STICK IT TO THE MAN! …..or MY man, as it were.
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My last smart phone I dropped right on the top corner so the screen broke, but the phone still wroked. It had a nice spider web effect and I used it for about 2 more months before I decided it was embarassing enough to get a new one. I have 2 little ones so anything drool, chew, drop proof is essential!
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I have a Blackberry, nuff said.
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In my backyard on a hot summer day, I was lounging around talking on the phone with a margarita sitting on the ground next to me. No need to guess what happened: Call ended, and as I tried to set the phone down on the ground, I bumped my hand on the edge of my chair and ker-plunk…the phone dropped straight into the margarita. Sticky, soaked mess. It never worked again. The margarita still tasted fine, however. 🙂
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My husband recently dropped his phone in the toilet. Every now and then my smartness shines through and was able to save his phone using the rice method. That’s the extent of my (or my husband’s) phone tale. Not as interesting as other people’s though…
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I dropped my phone in a glass of water while I was talked to my husband. He could hear it gurgle on the way down.
But, my story does not hold a candle to my sister’s dropping her phone in a port-o-potty right before the mini marathon.
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I once sent my husbands phone through the washing machine. It didn’t survive. Other than that my phones mostly just get abused by being tossed in my purse/diaper bag, dropped when I try to carry everything in from the van in one trip, and gnawed on by my drool-y almost one year old!
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THIS would be nice… since we have three little kids and the last phone ended in the toilet.
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What haven’t my kids done to my phone? It’s been drooled on, dropped in the toilet, trash, puddles, but the worst was when I dropped my brand new phone and cracked the screen so badly that I had to guess at what my texts were saying for about a year before I could replace it.
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Being a super intelligent person (also possibly an intoxicated one at the time) I balanced my priceless can’t spend a moment without iphone across a glass full of water (it was that point in the evening) needless to say it fell in. I have a new iphone now. That I sat on. BUT IT WORKS.
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Phones, oh my, I washed the first one in the washing machine. I blame that one on baby brain. Then the day after I replaced another one, I bent over to wash a child in the tub, the phone was in my jacket pocket and it slipped out to go for a little swim. I thought it was the shampoo or something that fell in so it was there a minute. Oops. Then one of the kiddos decided it needed a bath in the TOILET. It falls on the asphalt or whatever else happens to be outside the car door when I get out. My kids all think it is a toy and with five of them it sure gets a lot of loving. What can I say, my poor phones have a rough life. And I think I am the only one on the planet who doesn’t have a smart one but I sure do want one.
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Couple of years ago round Christmas time we packed up the kids to go pick out our tree. As we started driving my son mentioned he just saw a snowball fly past the window (it hadn’t snowed in weeks) – fast forward five minutes to my son asking if he could play on my phone. As I reached for it and realized it wasn’t there – all the sudden the snowball made perfect sense. I had left my iPhone on top of the car. We hurried back to the scene of the crime and there was my phone lying face down, cracked bruised and broken in the middle of the road. Sniff snifff
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I had been dating this guy for a while, I thought things were going great. Then out of nowhere I get a text that he is GAY! Before I knew it the phone was flying accross the room only to hit and shatter the big window in our living room. Oh my…he was so not worth it.
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Oh my goodness we have lost TWO cell phones due to water. My daughter decided to put one in our dishwasher (came out VERY clean mind you but dead as a doornail). Then less than a year later my husband went swimming in the ocean on vacation and had forgot that our cell phone was in his pocket. Oops. So we could absolutely use a waterproof cell phone around here!
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I hate buying new technology before I have used up the old, because that seems like the greenest way to go. But once I was replacing our phones, after 7 years using the same truly awful phones, I figured we should indulge and go as green as possible, and as low an SAR as possible. We got two phone made of environmental awesome, supposedly.
Wrong, because spousy switched just a few months later; his work could not tolerate such an unreliable phone (turns itself off, constantly switching modes, from phone to email, and from email to phone, so that you can never instantly make a phone call, you always have to wait a minute (60 seconds!!) for it to catch up. After we bought the phone, so did the rest of the world, and it seems like every single one of those customers has gone on online to tell the world how bad the phone is. Wish we had waited a month for those reviews!
I am actually so grateful to have a phone that somewhat works, and that even does email (!) (in some reception areas), so I cannot call this a tale of woe, but it IS my cell phone tale.
Have a great weekend Casey!
Liza
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