Apple bans game that may destroy your smartphone

Send Me To Heaven is an app for smartphones that is both incorrigibly idiotic and utterly brilliant. It calls itself a ‘sports game’ and challenges players to hurl their phone as high as they dare, using the device’s sensors to record the height of the throw so you can challenge your friends to beat your score.

Banned by the Apple App Store for "encouraging behaviour that could result in damage to the user's device”, SMTH is still available for free on the Google Play store. Either Apple cares more about it users’ phones than Google does, or they just trust them less.

The games creators, Carrot Pop, encourage participants to turn on their GPS and record where throws are made: “National and even city challenges will be organized later and you will need GPS for that.”

Speaking to The Independent, the game's creator Petr Svarovsky described the game as "far from perfect" but that it "makes people do exactly what I wanted them to: Be funny again. Stop watching small screens, jump around and show some entertaining actions. Be inventive, construct slingshots, make rockets and try to be the best in the world."

Users who download the app must first agree to a disclaimer confirming that they are playing the game at ‘entirely their own risk’ with instructions for the game offering the following sage advice: “Hints: Be careful not to injure yourself or others. Be always aware that there is enough space above you and around you. Do some training to learn right skills to get best results.”

Svarovsky is somewhat bemused by the attention his game has received: "People come to me with questions: What do you want to say with this? Why do you do that? Is not it pointless? Well, I am here to ask questions, not to answer them. I give this little piece to people and they start to think and ask question: What is a meaning of the game? What is a real thrill? What value has this phone for me?"

Those who want to answer these questions and find out exactly how much value their phone has to them are advised to try their hand at SMTH. Tactics suggested for record-settings scores include a drunken indifference to your phone’s wellbeing and a comprehensive insurance policy.