THE horror begins with a loose grip on the iPhone, five bags of shopping and hard unforgiving concrete, a scene of devastation that will bring a tear to the eye of every 21st century man about town.

The shards of broken glass reflected the look of disbelief on my face.

I’d smashed my iPhone and lost contact with the modern world.

I had entrusted all my worldly contacts and addresses to this piece of broken technology. I’d blissfully downloaded music and apps of talking cats, but never thinking to buy a protective case.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t even document my misfortune on Facebook and Twitter.

With the explosion of iPhones and other smartphones, it’s a dilemma the more clumsy of us will face sooner rather than later.

Thankfully a whole repair industry has sprouted up around mobile phone technology.

We Fix/Bournemouth Console Repair is one such business that opened its doors earlier this month on Holdenhurst Road.

“There’s a huge demand. I get customers in with at least 10 broken screens a week,” says owner David Walters.

Yet despite the growth in mobile phone repair, there aren’t many with a physical shop you can visit.

“We’re a company with a shop and not working out of a bedroom or garage,” adds David. “Many online companies can ask you to post your phone, which puts many people off.

“A lot of my customers like to stay and watch their phone being repaired, as they contain so much personal information.”

I do likewise and take the shattered remnants of my iPhone along to be rebuilt. Through searching online, I’d found numerous websites offering step-by-step DIY phone repair, but I had no idea of the skill required.

“I’ve been fixing phones for five years,” adds David. “When I started you couldn’t get the parts for older phones, but now you can replace every part.”

With a set of intricate tools and a James Bond-style sucker device, that’s right a sucker, David nimbly set about fixing the innards of the iPhone with the delicacy of a heart surgeon.

He adds: “You need steady hands and patience to fix them. Sometimes it’s even quite relaxing. With the right care, the average iPhone has a shelf life of roughly three to four years.”

Watching the repair work, it highlighted the strange juxtaposition of modern technology needing a skilled craftsman to manually repair the painfully small components.

According to David , the recession has seen more customers looking to repair rather than replace.