Most of us have a mobile device horror story or two that we could share. Have you dropped yours off a boat? Driven over it when you backed your car out of the driveway? Besides feeling a bit foolish do such accidents send you into some kind of withdrawal? And what's your reaction when your boss calls you during dinner, or your mother calls you during your honeymoon night? (Don't laugh.) To celebrate our love-hate relationship with smartphones, Finland's created the
sport of mobile phone throwing. If you were unaware that such a sport exists take solace in the fact that it has only been around, on an international level, for about 13 years. This year at the 13th annual Mobile Phone World Championships, 18-year-old Ere Karjalainen set an event record by hurling an aging Nokia device some 101.46 meters -- about 333 feet. No doubt the weight of his old phone had more to do with his success than the previous day, which he spent warming up by drinking. Despite that, or possibly because of it, Karjalainen came within a whisker of the world record. This year was a particularly exciting one for mobile phone throwing. Earlier, Briton Chris Hughff managed to lob his device an impressive 102.68 meters (about 337 feet) at JIM Mobile’s Belgium Championships. Although a laser rangefinder was used to measure his throw, it was deemed unofficial by the organizer of the Finnish world championships, one Christine Lund. Bureaucratic nonsense aside, the Finnish event has a serious side: It's held in order to promote recycling – all of the phones damaged in the event are recycled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgw99VoCssU&feature=player_embedded
Related Links
- Finland sets new mobile phone record... by throwing one [Engadget]
