Breaking phones a costly hang- up

SMASHED your smartphone? You’re not alone.

Australians break more than 1300 smartphones every day and have splashed out more than $ 755 million to replace broken and lost handsets in the last five years, new research into the costly carelessness revealed today.

As many as one in 10 Australians have broken a phone beyond repair — doing more than just smashing the screen — and Millennials are by far the biggest offenders. The study of 2005 Australians found 26 per cent of Millennials had lost or irreparably damaged their mobile phone since 2012, compared to just 8 per cent of Baby Boomers, and 17 per cent from the marginally more responsible Generation X.

More Australians destroyed their smartphone than those who merely lost it, the study found, and Finder. com. au technology expert Alex Kidman said those phone users probably underestimated how much the devices would cost to replace until it was too late.