- Football fans spilling and throwing pints can destroy your smartphone
- Cider, with its high sugar content, can destroy the inside of even an IP68 rated phone
- If you’re guilty of such spillage and booze-based debauchery, make sure you do something to clean and protect your phone
As a man who hates waste and has a distinct apathy for excessive football celebrations, the seemingly new phenomenon of throwing alcoholic pints into the air when eventual runners-up England score a goal has left me with an even greater disdain for jaded football supporters.
For American readers
A quick note to our American readers: this pint-swilling antics may not be something you’re entirely familiar with, but as hosts of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, it’s important that we also alert you to this beverage-based danger to your smartphone.
Research by Aldi notes that during the 2024 European Football Championship almost 5 million pints were spilled every time the England team scored a goal, and as such avoiding accelerated alcohol during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could be a challenge – even for those of you lucky enough to support another nation.
The best I can do to combat this idiotic insanity is to highlight the booze that causes the most damage to smartphones – using data from phone comparison and recycling site Compare and Recycle – in the hope that the next time Freddie Flag jumpers, Gravy Dave and Barry Bulldogs decide to send their pints skyward, you’ll be ready to take cover.
My prejudices aside, even if you’re at a more civilized public house – perhaps one with a decent selection of draft beer and fancy sausage rolls – pints can still be spilled via more innocent bumps with a hand or a tray, so hopefully you’ll find this information useful even if you’re not a foot-mad hooligan.
Now you might say to me, ‘Roland, the best phones are definitely waterproof…’ and I’ll say ‘correct, have a tech sticker’. But I’ll also point out that the folks at Compare and Recycle have noticed that the composition of commonly chugged drinks can damage even phones rated for a dunk in the drink.
“While many modern flagship smartphones have an IP67 or IP68 rating, which provides some level of water resistance, this is typically only for fresh water and offers little proven protection against the sugary alcoholic liquids found in beer and cider,” says Lee Elliott, product manager at Compare and Recycle.
Even when a phone is wiped clean of spilled drink, the sugar in it can absorb moisture from the surrounding environment and penetrate areas of the phone that may be resistant to regular water but can be corroded by sugar.
“Add in the alcohol content, which can act as a mild solvent over time and gradually break down things like the oleophobic coating (an oil-repellent layer) on your screen or rubber seals around ports and buttons, and you can begin to understand why a spilled pint is a much bigger problem for your phone than you might first realize,” explains Lee.
Special pints are purveyors of palaver for portable phones (thank you), with cider apparently the worst offender due to its high sugar content; so I would suggest extra caution when seeing England at a Somerset based public house or alcohol dispensary.
Beer is less of an issue, but Kronenbourg 1664 (a reasonable lager in this seasoned drinker’s opinion) is the most phone-unfriendly beverage according to Compare and Recycle’s list. Here’s the full list of drinks, ordered from most to least dangerous:
The ranked list
- Copper Mountain
- Old Mout
- Record breaking
- Magners
- Strongbow dark fruits
- Blackthorn
- Woodpecker Cider
- Thatcher’s gold
- Bulmer’s
- Strongbow Original
- Kronenbourg 1664
- Estrella Dam
- San Miguel
- Stella Artois
- Peroni
- Heineken
- Grolsch
- Corona
- Birra Moretti
- Budweiser
Analysis: Clean your phone, empty it
“Spills during a football match are inevitable. If it’s not you spilling the drink on someone else, chances are your friend will spill it on you. It’s just one of those match day accidents,” says Lee, who I feel paints a depressing picture of British society in 2026.
Yes, we’re allowed an accident, but if you’re not careful with your drink at the age of £7 a pint, I think you really need to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. If you deliberately throw a pint in the air when an overpaid kicker with a love of drama gets close to the opposition’s goal line, well… I’m not sure I can really say how I feel about it on TechRadar.
My advice is to keep your phone in your pocket or handbag — if you’re in a pub, be sociable, don’t swipe at a screen — and act like a civilized person and simply cheer on the ‘beautiful game’ while keeping a firm grip on your drink. In short, don’t be a word that rhymes with stick or punt.
Nevertheless, putting my views aside and accepting Lee’s claim that leaks are inevitable, the question is: what should you do to keep your phone safe? Compare and Recycle suggests the following:
- Immediately turn off your device: While it’s tempting to check that your device is still fully functional, electricity flowing through wet components causes short circuits.
- Remove accessories: Phone cases are great for protecting your phone from drops, but keeping it on after a spilled pint can prevent your device from drying out properly. Remove it immediately along with any screen protectors as the liquid can seep under imperfections and cause screen damage.
- Rinse with water to remove sticky residue: It might sound counter-intuitive, but if you get a decent amount of pint or cider spilled on your phone, it might actually be beneficial to give it a quick rinse under a slow running tap to remove the spill as quickly as possible. This is because sugary residue can speed up the corrosion of things like the motherboard. Only do this when your phone is completely off. Give it a quick wipe with a clean, dry cloth, paying close attention to the charging port and speaker grills, where liquid is most likely to have entered.
- Clear the ports by pressing gently on the top of your phone: Gently tap your phone against your palm to help gravity do its job with the charging port and speaker grills facing down. This will encourage excess fluid to flow out of the openings.
- Resist turning it back on too soon: The instinct after following these steps is to turn your phone back on and see if it still works, but it’s best to keep it off and let it dry completely – even if that means waiting until the final whistle.
So yes, follow these tips to help your phone survive spills.
But also, my tip would be to find friends who aren’t lowly galoots, yobs or knuckleheads, or watch a more civilized sport like tennis or F1.
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