The myth of the 'drunk phone'

Some young adults are so fond of their expensive smartphones that they take a cheaper backup phone with them to bars and leave their fancier phones at home where they are safe from spilled vodka tonics, pickpockets and uncoordinated drunk people.

That's according to consumer-behavior expert Laura Krajecki of the Starcom MediaVest Group, who stumbled upon the trend while researching beer and shared it with AdAge. "They take what they call their 'drunk phone' ... because they don't want to lose their smartphone," she said.

CNN's independent research yielded different results, however.

An exhausting, though hardly exhaustive, survey of bar patrons in San Francisco this past weekend turned up zero people who had opted to carry a beater phone out with them on a night of drinking. Nor did any interview subjects know other people who had ever done such a thing.

But as seasoned bartender Jerome Bishop put it, "I've never heard of anybody doing that, but it doesn't mean they don't."

It's possible the people in watering holes visited by this reporter were not young enough (are college students more likely to binge drink and lose things?), well-off enough (a stream of secondary phones can add up), or beta testing top secret phones for their Silicon Valley employers.

Interestingly, while the mythical back-up phone was nowhere to be found, carrying multiple phones was not uncommon. Two friends at Churchill bar were hauling around their assigned work phones -- both BlackBerrys, of course -- in addition to their personal handsets.

Many people admitted to having lost their phones while drinking in the past but were still set on taking their smartphones with them on nights out.

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