While it’s easy to see how a case can protect a phone with its padded corners, it’s harder to see the value in getting a screen protector, especially if you’re spending big on a flagship phone which supposedly has the toughest glass or ceramic ever.
Bit it turns out there’s a multitude of screen protectors out there, costing between $10–$100, with varying degrees of quality and protection, and they can save you much more than that in repair fees.
Is a screen protector worth the extra money?Credit:Bloomberg
At the bottom, cheapest end of the scale, are the plastic screen protectors you see everywhere. They only exist to protect your screen from minor scratches and will give you little, if any, protection from drops.
Most screen damage, however, comes from drops. A recent study showed that Americans on average drop their phones four times a week. That’s a lot of faith to put into those “tough glass” claims, considering phones cost up to $2500 and a new screen can cost almost half that. Even at the non-flagship end of the scale, a new phone screen done properly will set you back a few hundred dollars, which means it might not be worth the gamble. The catch with the “toughest ever” claims is that these screens are still made of glass or ceramics, and there’s only so much impact they can take.
The most common of the protective options are made from tempered glass. This glass is treated so it won’t shatter and hurt you. Tempered glass will have you covered for drops up to 50 centimetres, but still will probably only survive one really good drop from any higher than that.
Screen protectors aren’t all made equal.
The next step up is aluminium silicate, which goes through a kind of salt bath to exchange ions at a molecular level which strengthens the glass and means it can survive a drop from one metre.
Things get even fancier with lithium aluminium silicate. After having the sodium ions added to replace lithium ions in the first bath, it gets a second ion bath to replace those sodium ions with potassium. LAS is 30 per cent stronger than AS, and is much, much hardier against chips when you just throw your phone in your bag with your keys. Belkin is currently the only brand on the market with LAS.
Another screen protection technology comes from D30 (licenced by EFM) which uses non-Newtonian principles that allow molecules to flow freely and better absorb force. In its raw form it’s a kind of goo that absorbs shock and in the screen protectors appears to be combined with layers of glass.