When I kill a phone, I don't do things halfway. Have only done it once, but it was my almost-new Galaxy Nexus that I loved dearly and the sequence of events was like something out of a sitcom. I had started to take a shower, and a plastic fitting on the side of the showerhead broke and water shot up in the air and all the way across the bathroom, getting my dog all wet in the process (yes, this is relevant). I was trying to clean it up when the phone rang. I ran to get it and was running back, slipped on a wet spot I'd missed (or the dog had dripped on after I cleaned it) and fell on the tile floor. Miraculously, I wasn't permanently damaged.

The Nexus wasn't so lucky. It flew out of my hand, landed face down on the hard tile and the screen shattered into about a million pieces. It wouldn't turn on - no lights, no sound, no signs of life. Didn't have the insurance (had never needed it through a dozen or more phones) so I had to pay $650 for a new one. The rotten thing is that the new one has never worked quite as flawlessly as that first one. Nothing big, but occasional hangs and need to reboot that never happened with the other one.

The other rotten thing is that the phone call - which I only ran to answer because my husband was gone and I thought it might be him - was from my weed treatment company. Not exactly urgent enough to warrant the $650 cost.