What's the first thing they try to sell you when you buy a phone these days? If your experience is anything like mine, it's a set of plastic screen protectors. Can't remember the last time I didn't hear, "You just spent a few hundred on a smartphone and it costs $600 to replace...what's $30 for a set of screen protectors?"
Well. Are they a waste of money? Phones are beautiful these days and their screens are the biggest part of their beauty. Have you fiddled with screen protectors? They leave bubbles. They go on crooked. The best looking ones require you to actually wet your phone and then squeegie them on (something that inevitably left me with that one, odd piece of lint or dog hair permanently embedded in my viewing area!). This can actually destroy the phone itself if you don't remove the battery first and let it dry overnight before powering it on.
I submit for your approval: treated glass. The most common is good old, Corning Gorilla Glass. First of all, this is an American company for those of you who care about that. It's neat to see an American product required on all of the top phones. The other thing is that this is treated glass. It's flexible, it's light, it's tough.
Watch this video:
You can see on the "medium" pressure that he applies, that he is actually applying pressure.
Now, watch this video from China with an HTC One X using the latest Gorilla Glass 2:
Lastly, here's a practical application. This phone does NOT use Gorilla Glass, but a Chinese substitute...he succeeds in scratching the glass (fast foward to 3:20...sorry, this is the best test I've found...because the guy already broke his phone):
So...the bottom line is, why uglify your new phone? Why throw away money for a cheap piece of plastic that's a real pain to apply and generally ruins the appearance of the display? Maybe if you know that you are going to grind your phone on gravel, but short of that, save your money.
last note: I've been going without a screen protector for the last two years. I HAVE received two very minor scratches, but one is almost impossible to find, and the other was on an older generation smartphone when the glass technology was a new thing and phone manufacturers didn't focus on this.
UPDATE: I scratched my Amaze 4G screen without a protector! How'd I do it? Well, it fell out of my pocket when I was sitting up in a tall SUV and fell out of the door. It was about a 4 foot drop onto concrete...the problem was that the concrete had gravel sprinkled across it. Three pieces of gravel caused three tiny scratches on the screen. They're pretty minor, but my research has shown that sand or gravel, when rubbed across the screen, will still cause scratches as in the HTC Amaze video above. I'm not sure what it is, but it must just grab onto the oleophobic (grease repelling, as in from your fingerprint) coating that the glass is treated with and then grind the hard minerals against your glass, causing the scratches. So, while coins and keys in your pockets will not scratch your phone, the sand between your wallet and phone while sitting at the beach might. Perhaps it's a matter of where you go and what you do with your phone. Personally, a case that rides up above your screen (I had no case on my Amaze), just barely, will probably do the trick to prevent the grit from grinding against your screen. As for my phone, the scratches are minor and only noticable when I look for them...the problem is: I KNOW THEY ARE THERE!
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