<p>Please forgive me if this has been discussed recently. I am finally giving in and getting a smart phone. My daughter has always had insurance on her phone (and for good reason-lol), but I am wondering if it is a necessary expense for me.</p>
<p>What do you all do as far as phone insurance?</p>
<p>I don’t have it. I do have a nice case for my phone – I’ve dropped the phone on hard surfaces a couple of times, so I feel that the case was a worthwhile investment. But I’m not the type of person to lose stuff. (My kids tease me because I always make a big deal of checking to be sure I have my phone and keys before I leave a restaurant or other public place). </p>
<p>I think it’s just an economic decision. The maximum monetary loss is the replacement value of the phone – and for me, that’s a risk that is significantly less than the deductibles on most of my other insurance policies. So I really don’t worry about that.</p>
<p>The much bigger “risk” entailed in losing a smart phone is something that insurance won’t cover in any case – a lot of us store a lot of information on the phones, or have apps that connect to web sites with a lot of information – plus we end up with dozens of apps each configured to our own liking. So if I did lose my phone or if it was damaged, I think that the inconvenience factor would be far more worrisome than replacement cost.</p>
<p>Our last few phones I have insured through square trade. D broke her phone and they sent her a new one right away. For my kids it is worth the premium.
I don’t have insurance on my IPhone which I have had for 3 yrs now. I am a lot more careful with my things.</p>
<p>I bought my first smart-phone for me last September - iPhone 5. I didn’t get insurance and I didn’t get a case and there isn’t a scratch on it. I’m generally very careful with electronics. I got my daughter a smartphone last summer and we got a case for it. She drops her phone a lot. We didn’t get insurance.</p>
<p>It depends on how you handle your electronics products and whether or not what you get is considered reliable. How do you handle your current phone? I</p>
<p>I have insurance on my son’s smart phone. One time he it dropped in the toilet. Not sure how that happened and another time he didn’t take it out of his jeans and washed it.</p>
<p>I don’t have it on my smart phone though. I’m pretty sure I won’t do either of the above.:)</p>
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<p>Two good areas: security and backup. The iPhone does a wipe if you don’t enter a correct password and you get 10 tries. I think that Android may give you more options in security.</p>
<p>With the iPhone, I connect the phone to my laptop and it backs everything up. In theory, I could just buy a new iPhone and sync the data for the old iPhone to the new one. You can supposedly do this without a laptop with iCloud but I haven’t tried that. On Android, I think that you have to redownload and reinstall all of your apps but your data should be saved on the Google Cloud. I did have to restore an Android tablet once and went through this and it wasn’t all automatic.</p>
<p>I, S and D have each lost or destroyed one cell phone over the past 10 years. We have NEVER had insurance on any of our phones. H has never lost or destroyed any phones. Since we got smart phones on Dec 31, 2012, we have all been able to keep our iPhone 5s intact and unharmed. We have never purchased insurance and feel we have saved over the years not bothering with them. </p>
<p>When my phone started malfunctioning, I was able to borrow a phone from a relative who had gotten an upgrade and was just keeping the phone as a “spare,” until we were ready to purchase our new phones. S has also been able to purchase replacement phones inexpensively on the internet, as needed in the past.</p>
<p>A lot depends on the individual. If you take care of your possessions and don’t tend to lose them and can afford the loss in case something unexpected happens (phone is lost, broken or stolen), I don’t see value in insuring and prefer to save the $$ by self-insuring.</p>
<p>That said, my niece and nephews have all broken smart phones and are pretty unhappy that there was no insurance covering their losses. Most of the adults I know have no problem taking care of their phones and keeping them from being lost, stolen, broken or dunked in liquids & most don’t bother to insure (often you have to pay the premium PLUS a deductible).</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. Sounds like I don’t need insurance. :)</p>
<p>I bought a college student’s renter’s policy for both of my kids through CSI and it covers phones. It is about the same price as what the phone companies charge for just the phone.</p>
<p>We have insurance for all of our phones.
But with Verizon it still costs $100 to get t h e replacement.
Plus the damaged phone has to be mailed back before you get the n ew one so there is some delay there.</p>
<p>Son’s cheap feature phone just died (looks like the circuit for the backlight) so I asked him what he’d like and also went over what he’d have to pay. My guess is that he’s going to go with the Google Nexus 4 - a mid-range phone that will work with prepaid. I don’t think that he’s going to need insurance as he’s generally good with tech gear. His old phone is a Motorola RAZR - basically 10-year-old tech.</p>
<p>For the longest time I never used phone insurance on my smartphone. I thought it would be pointless and a waste of money. I have a nephew now who likes to play with my phone (everything he touches usually breaks) and the phone dropped on the tile floor and cracked down the screen. Luckily I was due for an upgrade so I was able to get a new phone. This time I decided it was a good idea to get insurance. After doing some research I ended up going with ProtectCELL- [Beyond</a> cell phone insurance, complete protection for your mobile lifestyle](<a href=“http://www.protectcell.com/]Beyond”>http://www.protectcell.com/) for my phone insurance. They have a bunch of different plans you can choose from. There is even a free basic plan.</p>
<p>Now that we all have smartphones, we only carry insurance for the distant college kid. We keep at least one upgrade unused (they have staggered renewal dates), in case needed. But really just having one working smartphone to fall back on would work.</p>
<p>AppleCare.
I didn’t have it when I watered my phone ( they charged me $80 for a new one) but when I upgraded I made sure I had AppleCare & I wasn’t charged anything when I dropped the phone onto the sidewalk, from height( I was pruning a tree)& it completely shattered the face :(</p>
<p>i got insurance Iphone ATT for my drop prone D. lost was not covered. tried to use it in Chicago on broken glass. ATT store denied it existed and iphone store denied she had it. I paid for a new glass at $99. we spent a good 2 hours on this ripoff. not doing that again.</p>
<p>Square Trade is better than any phone company warranty and it covers breakage and theft.</p>
<p>Rockymthigh you can check your coverage on the Apple website. I make an appt online, that way when I go in to the store all they have to do is pull up my name & they have associated serial #'s.</p>
<p>CSI insurance for college students also covers breakage and theft.</p>
<p>So does NSSI. We didn’t get the warranty because of that coverage. I had to check coverage recently because I wanted to make sure it worked overseas. It does. Does not cover motorcycles or airplane parts.</p>
<p>I insure my daughter’s phone because she is very tough on her phones. I don’t bother insuring mine. It’s been almost two years and mine is in very good shape. I’m careful with mine.</p>
<p>it seems cheaper to get a land line instead of a smart phone AND an insurance.</p>