After five years of almost-completely protected cellphones, after some consideration, I’m rocking a “frontal nudity”: no screen protector. None at all. No tempered glass, no plastic film, nothing. Just the case.
I’ve used both plastic films and tempered glass before. What always bothered me was the fact that I couldn’t get past the awareness that it was there. Even with precisely applied plastic films on plain screens, but it got worse with our now ubiquitous curved glass screens. I with I could ignore it, but no. Since I’ve never had a broken screen, not even scratched, I’ve decided to go protector-free.
In these couple of weeks going without a screen protector, I noticed a few things:
- The oleophobic coating of the glass screen protectors are way worse than the phone’s original screen is. I was used to cleaning smudges off my screen throughout the day. I barely do it now.
- The screen feels different. There’s no noticeable difference in the touch sensibility, but there is a great one on the tact itself. My finger slides different over the phone’s screen that it did on the protector. The phone feels better.
- Probably a consequence of the previous point, I now make more mistakes while typing. I guess my muscle memory was used to the friction on the glass screen protector and I’m still relearning. That said, I mostly use swype-to-type through Gboard, so most of the time it’s actually easier. The few times I have to really type - complicated names or words in other languages - I make more mistakes.
What are your thoughts? Do you use a protector? Has it ever paid off to use one - as in, you had to replace the protector but not the actual phone screen? Which brand do you use/recommend?
haha
