How many people does it take to crack a smartphone screen? No, the answer is not one mom balancing a take-away coffee and several bags of shopping as she travels from her garage to her front door. Or, on a separate and more embarrassing occasion, that same mom who absentmindedly emptied her sandy beach bag out the window of a moving car only to discover that her phone was still inside. Yes, I have done both of these things, but that’s not the point of this article. Although you would think that a seasoned “screen shatterer” would be perfectly positioned to put a smartphone – which claims to have one of the hardiest screens in the industry – to the test.

Yes, that’s what we were challenged to do at the Honor X9b Beyond Limits Experience in Cape Town at the end of January. The Honor device, the Chinese consumer electronics brand’s new mid-range smartphone, was launched in South Africa in February and is equipped with an Ultra-Bounce Anti Drop Display. What does that mean? Well, it’s the first in the industry to score a Five Star Overall Drop Resistance certification from SGS in Switzerland, which means that you have to try pretty hard to break the screen.