Slashdot Mirror
CES, Reporter Breaks "Unbreakable" Mobile Phone
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Reporter Dan Simmons from the BBC's technology show Click managed to break a mobile phone marketed as 'unbreakable' (video), during a demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas." The phone can survive a 10 story fall, being submerged 20 feet for 30 mins, and you can use it to hammer a nail; but it's no match for a British journalist.
You can destroy anything if you apply the right force. Making a bald statement that a phone (or anything else) is unbreakable will just prompt some folks to find the right force, even if it isn't something the phone would normally experience.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Seriously? A story about breaking a phone which surprisingly is not unbreakable? If it's a slow news day at least put it in idle!
Meh.
You sound like those crazy sociology professors who get pissed at words like "manhole" and "mankind." It's part of the presentation style, relax.
It adds another word to the bland summary.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
It's not as if we wouldn't have known anyway: his first reaction is to apologize profusely.
An American journalist would've rephrased the marketing blurb on the phone, not tried it out, and welcomed our new invincible mobile overlords, only to be made fun of by Jon Stewart later that night.
The key to breakage here being that when they said "You can hammer a nail with it!" they didn't mean, "You can hammer a nail with the screen"
Screens will always be the weak point until we get that transparent aluminum out there to shield it while keeping it visible. And even then, you know, that little display would still be susceptible to heat. I have a hunch a lighter would have had similar success in destroying the screen.
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
To be fair, it takes him a few solid whallops before it does break, and the rep doesn't look the least bit concerned until it actually snaps.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
My dad told me the story of when he was 16 (around 1966) and the local hardware store had got in unbreakable dishes (Corningware I think), and being a young imp, he decided to give it a shot. He dropped the plate on its edge, which, apparently is the weak spot on such dishes, and it literally exploded. He did this, naturally, during a product demonstration, and was promptly banned from the store.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You've changed, man. It used to be about the music!
Or, wait...what was Slashdot about waaay back in the 900,000 range of UIDs?
Ah, well, when the CEO-chap said "You've broken the screen" I assumed that meant he'd broken the screen. ;)
And lots of things still work after being broken. Screens like that are one of them. It's just that as the breakage increases, the usability decreases. I'm sure that if he managed to crack it by hitting it on the corner of a fish tank, he could continue to break it further by continuing his previous actions. In the long run, the screen would break to the point of non-usability.
I have a friend with an old iphone. I think it was run over several times by a car. There is not a single piece of glass on the display that is larger than 3mm in diameter. They're all still attached due to the glue used to adhere it, however. It's just a horribly fractured display. It still works somehow, display and touch functionality, but I don't think anyone would go so far as to claim it's "not broken." ;)
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
An excellent court jester is the best of role models; they allow themselves to be the butt of many jokes while exposing the truth often at a potentially signifigant cost to themselves.
Jon Stewart is an excellent court jester
The CEO gave the reporter a new phone because the reporter was able to break the demo phone.
Some bosses are very nice people and understand that things can fail --- if you listen to the CEO he does say "almost unbreakable" at the start of the video.
Make something idiot-proof, and the world just makes a better idiot...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
If you can still access your information on the phone, and it can still make and receive calls, then it's not broken. Just damaged.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
All publicity is good publicity?
well, we now have the idea of an unbreakable phone in our head.
& we probably think of it as something that is difficult to achieve and mostly likely attribute value to the product.
Court jesters have often played the role of pointing out the poignant truths around them with just enough humour to avoid being hung for noticing.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
In addition to providing entertainment, wasn't the court jester supposed to keep the monarch humble by pointing out things that others would not dare? I'd say Jon Stewart makes an excellent jester in that regard, and all the more power to him for it.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Too bad for the phone maker it was a simple act of smacking the thing like a child would or an angry person.
Spot on
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register