Rugged phones: your best stories

Thanks for all your great stories of battered and bruised mobile phones on our forums. Here are just a few of them, including the two winners, who each win a rugged phone

WINNERS

Winner of the ‘Most Unpleasant Place to be Stuck for Several Hours’ Award

A few years ago the diesel tank appeared to be out of red diesel.

On looking through the manhole cover on top, my phone slipped out of my pocket and into the tank. Seeing it lying in about an inch of diesel I quickly climbed in to retrieve it.

Unfortunately the phone was soaked and unusable and I couldn’t get back out the tank and I was the only one on the farm that day.

I couldn’t call anyone because my phone was now broken, so I had to wait until my wife came back and hope she would help me out and not just put the lid back on.

Digger101

We tested all four ‘rugged’ phones available in the UK.

About two to three years ago I was baling straw into conventionals in August. The tractor hadn’t got any doors or a proper cab even.

The phone managed to fall out on to the floor. I didn’t realise this until it was too late and had done another couple of rounds and then couldn’t find it.

Later in the month the field went into stubble turnips and in December sheep went on to it. By March I got into it with the plough and happened to glance out of the cab and see something. I jumped out and there it was.

Six months on, it was still in the same place I had dropped it, but was well battered by weather and the sheep.

Even though it did work I had got another phone after losing this one.

Farmer Jim

BEST OF THE REST

I was building new pigsties, adding some cement to the sides and, as I leaned over the cement bucket to fill in a crack, my phone fell out of my pocket and landed in the bucket with the cement. Unfortunately I did not realise so I added water and stirred the cement. I put the cement on the wall and looked at it and my phone was in the wall. A shame, but the SIM card lived on.

ricky

I was busy grading on the back table of the potato harvester in overalls which then didn’t have Velcro pockets. I heard my phone ringing, felt my pocket – nothing there – and the noise was getting further away. Then suddenly I realised it had disappeared with the potatoes up the elevator into the trailer. A quick scramble into the trailer was required to retrieve the old Nokia 3210, which survived the fall as well as a battering from the spuds.

Pastymunchingpete

I had just taken delivery of brand-new, shiny Sony Ericsson T20. Two days later I was in a corn bin, shovelling the last few tonnes to top it off. My phone was in my top pocket and I managed to lose it. Four months later, while loading a hopper for a grain lorry that was due that afternoon, the alarm bells rang in the drier, informing me there was a blockage. I set off to unblock the conveyor and there was my phone, a little bruised and showing a few light war wounds. I blew the phone off with the air line, charged it up and yes, sure enough, the phone fired up and worked for a good few years afterwards.

Tl-s

My Dad dropped his Nokia 3110 into a pig pen without realising. He later found it had been chewed, urinated on, excreted on, nuzzled around and stood on by a pen of 30kg weaners. It didn’t work, but I put it in the Rayburn for an hour. It smelled a bit and has a very scratched screen, but still works.

Spud 49

I was creosoting a new fence, which was going particularly well until I heard a plop. Yes, my phone had fallen into my bucket and, to give a bit of credit to Motorola, the phone did not die straight away. The keys were a bit sticky and you got a headrush when answering it, but we had another couple of days together before it finally expired.

Charlesa

Got a nice new N95 (far too good for the farm really, but good MP3 player) and, while servicing the Lexion 420, the engine oil drain pipe bung slipped from my somewhat frozen fingers. Fifteen litres of oil then poured all over myself, helpfully filling the breast pockets of my boiler suit to the brim and submerging the phone. The well-lubricated Nokia eventually lost all speaker and microphone functions, but the screen remains good, although a little blurry.

Willpix

I was driving a pea viner a few years ago when the gaffer decided to run across in front of the viner. I did not notice that his almost-new Nokia had fallen out of his boiler-suit pocket and it was promptly lifted into the viner. We stopped the machine to look for the phone but could not see it under all the pea vines, so our only solution was to turn the machine on slowly and stand at the back and wait. First the battery came out, then the case, the keyboard and all the parts one by one.

Scullywest

I was waiting on a call from a friend who was expecting his first lamb, which I’d promised I’d help him deliver. I was surrounded by hungry cows with a couple of spare turnips. You already can guess what happened next – the phone rang, I plucked it out of my overalls and it was in a cow’s mouth in a trice. The damn thing swallowed it and we could follow it by the ringtone for a couple of days.

Stu72

To see all 40-odd postings, go to www.fwi.co.uk/phonecomp