- Football supporters who spill and throw pints could ruin your smartphone
- Cider, with its high sugar content, can wreck the insides of even an IP68-rated phone
- If you fall foul of such spillage and booze-based buffoonery, make sure you take action to clean and protect your phone
As a man who hates waste and has a distinct apathy for over-the-top football celebrations, the seemingly new phenomenon of throwing alcoholic pints into the air when terminal runners-up England score a goal has left me with an even greater disdain for sloshed soccer supporters.
For US readers
A quick note for our US readers: this pint-flinging foolery may not be something you’re entirely familiar with, but as hosts of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, it’s important that we make you, too, aware of this beverage-based danger to your smartphone.
Research from Aldi notes that, during the 2024 European Football Championship, nearly 5 million pints were spilt every time the England team scored a goal, and as such, avoiding accelerated alcohol during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could be challenging — even for those of you lucky enough to support another nation.
The best I can do to combat this moronic mindlessness is to flag the booze that poses the most damage to smartphones — using data sourced by phone comparison and recycling site Compare and Recycle — with the hope that the next time Freddie Flag-jumper, Gravy Dave, and Barry Bulldogs decide to send their pint skyward, you’ll be primed and ready to take cover.
My prejudices aside, even if you’re at a more civilized public house — perhaps one with a nice selection of cask ales and fancy sausage rolls — pints can still be spilt via more innocent bumps of a hand or slips of a tray, and so hopefully, you’ll find this information useful even if you’re not a footy-mad hooligan.
Now you might say to me, ‘Roland, surely the best phones are waterproof…’ and I’d say ‘correct, have a tech sticker’. But I’d also point out that…
