Fanbois smash iPhone 5s much sooner than iPhone 3s ... but WHY?

Early iPhones last significantly longer before being accidentally destroyed than later models, according to a new survey - but nobody knows why.

Twelve per cent of smashed iPhones were left on the roof of a car, an experience which would challenge any model of handset, while 35 per cent were dropped into a bath or similar, which would destroy any iPhone - even if waterproofing is becoming more common among the competition.

The numbers come from MobilePhoneChecker, a tariff comparison site which asked 1,486 adults how they managed to destroy their iToys. Being dropped was, unsurprisingly, the most common killer of iPhones (43 per cent) while only one in ten blamed the accident on their children. Sitting down with the phone in a back pocket killed 32 per cent of knackered handsets.

More bizarre is the woman who accidentally “blended” her iPhone 5 while trying to shoot a Vine video (sadly she didn't give any more information about what she was up to), and the chap who smashed his while using it as a sex toy - too much Fifty Shades of Grey there, we reckon.

But most interesting was the average TTD (Time To Destruction) which shows the early-adopter mindset. A broken iPhone 3 will have been in use for 14.9 weeks, while a smashed 4 or 5 only gets to make calls for around 5.9 weeks before its demise.

The numbers are averaged, and the sample size isn't huge, but we can speculate that those touting a recent iPhone are just too blasé about their technology, or too busy working (earning money for the next iToy) to worry about their hardware, while the owner of an iPhone 3 values the device and takes better care of it.

Or perhaps the iPhone 3 just features a stronger construction, and survives more falls and unplanned plunges into liquid? Anecdotal evidence - and further hypotheses - welcomed in the comments. ®