Compare glass and film | What is best for a smartphone

How not to take care of a smart­phone or tablet, and avoid­ing dirt and dam­age on their screen is very dif­fi­cult in the absence of any pro­tec­tion. Replac­ing a dam­aged screen is not only unpleas­ant, but not cheap either. It is easy and sim­ple to pre­vent such a sit­u­a­tion: it is enough to choose high-qual­i­ty pro­tec­tion. Some of the most pop­u­lar options are glass and film. Which is bet­ter and what are the main dif­fer­ences? Our experts know the answer.

Features and types of protective film

Such a sim­ple and easy-to-use prod­uct as a pro­tec­tive film appeared on the mar­ket of mobile gad­gets and acces­sories for a long time. It helps to avoid a com­mon and unpleas­ant prob­lem — the appear­ance of scratch­es on the phone / tablet screen. The prod­uct is pre­sent­ed in the form of a thin film made of var­i­ous mate­ri­als. Depend­ing on the type of the lat­ter, there are sev­er­al types of pro­tec­tive film for the phone. Con­sid­er their main advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages:

1. Glossy — easy to use (you can stick it your­self), does not affect the image qual­i­ty, is prac­ti­cal­ly invis­i­ble on the screen, and the price is quite accept­able. But at the same time, the glossy film is eas­i­ly scratched, just as eas­i­ly soiled (espe­cial­ly with fat­ty fin­ger­prints), if a part of the film coat­ing is acci­den­tal­ly peeled off, it will not work per­fect­ly to stick it;

2. Mat­te — it has a slight­ly rough, easy-to-use sur­face that will pre­vent glare on the screen when the dis­play is on, fin­ger­prints, etc. will not be notice­able on it. At the same time, the same rough­ness of the mat­te film makes the image on the screen grainy;

3. Mir­ror — such a pro­tec­tive film can be used as a mir­ror, but image qual­i­ty and col­or repro­duc­tion will suf­fer, vis­i­bil­i­ty will dete­ri­o­rate;

4. Com­bined — com­bines the prop­er­ties of the first two types of pro­tec­tive film: does not dis­tort col­or repro­duc­tion and image qual­i­ty, does not cre­ate glare on the screen sur­face, does not “col­lect” fin­ger­prints, per­fect­ly pro­tects the screen from scratch­es. This type of pro­tec­tive film can be con­sid­ered, per­haps, one of the most opti­mal — it has no draw­backs;

5. Antibac­te­r­i­al — in its prop­er­ties is almost iden­ti­cal to a glossy film — the dif­fer­ence is only in a lay­er of spe­cial spray­ing, the main task of which is to destroy microbes when they hit the screen. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this pro­tec­tive lay­er wears off very quick­ly, so the antibac­te­r­i­al film will have to be changed more often than oth­ers;

6. Anti­spy­ware — in addi­tion to excel­lent pro­tec­tion against scratch­es, pro­vides reli­able “iso­la­tion” of infor­ma­tion on the screen from pry­ing eyes (a curi­ous observ­er will see only a glow). Like the com­bined ver­sion of the pro­tec­tive phone film, the anti-spy­ware actu­al­ly has no draw­backs.

There are also a num­ber of pos­i­tive points com­pat­i­ble with all kinds of pro­tec­tive films:

1. Small thick­ness of the sur­face — the prod­uct is tight­ly fixed on the phone screen and is almost indis­tin­guish­able by the eyes;

2. Mod­er­ate price — at the same time, the film will reli­ably pro­tect against minor house­hold scratch­es and scuffs;

3. No neg­a­tive impact on the qual­i­ty of the screen image — the pro­tec­tive film does not affect the degree of sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the gad­get’s screen, does not change the bright­ness of the screen image.

Features and types of protective glasses

Pro­tec­tive glass (tem­pered as it is also called) is a great way to pro­tect your phone screen from sig­nif­i­cant impacts. What is this acces­so­ry? This is a spe­cial­ly processed glass, which is first heat­ed to a tem­per­a­ture of 680 ⁰C and then cooled (using cold air). A prod­uct made in this way per­fect­ly pro­tects against point impacts, absorb­ing them by 100%, deep scratch­es, is not even afraid of the impact of a screw­driv­er or a knife attack.

Pro­tec­tive glass­es can be clas­si­fied accord­ing to sev­er­al cri­te­ria. So, depend­ing on the thick­ness and pur­pose, pro­tec­tive glass can be:

1. Mat­te / glossy — in its prop­er­ties it prac­ti­cal­ly does not dif­fer from the pro­tec­tive film of the same vari­ety (the dif­fer­ence is only in the mate­r­i­al used);

2. Gra­di­ent — used pri­mar­i­ly to pro­tect the back of the tele­phone pan­el. They are not glued to the screen, since they will not pro­vide suf­fi­cient trans­paren­cy;

3. Dec­o­ra­tive — such glass can hard­ly be called pro­tec­tive, since its main task is to dec­o­rate the phone. As well as gra­di­ent, it is glued to the back sur­face. Often, man­u­fac­tur­ers add glass for the screen sep­a­rate­ly to the kit.

Depend­ing on the cov­er­age glass­es are:

1. Sil­i­cone — pro­vides a strong fix­a­tion on the screen;

2. With pro­tec­tion — pre­vents the for­ma­tion of cracks;

3. With a con­tain­ment lay­er — in the event of a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the screen, such a lay­er pre­vents the frag­ments of dam­aged glass from scat­ter­ing;

4. Coat­ed with anti-glare — even in very bright light, the phone dis­play will not be dim;

5. With an oleo­pho­bic coat­ing — pro­vides a com­fort­able glide of fin­gers on the dis­play.

Advantages and disadvantages of protective glasses

What is better to choose?

To make the best choice, you need to visu­al­ly con­sid­er the com­par­a­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics. Our experts made a thor­ough com­par­i­son and here’s what hap­pened.

How to protect the body: valuable tips

Screen pro­tec­tion is an impor­tant point, but do not for­get about the safe­ty of the case itself, because under its sur­face, in gen­er­al, all the most valu­able things in the device are hid­den. So, sev­er­al options for pro­tec­tion for the case:

1. Bumper — designed to pro­tect the back of the device and its sides. After fix­ing, it slight­ly lifts the phone, with­out affect­ing its dimen­sions;

2. Over­lay — orig­i­nal pro­tec­tion, dec­o­rat­ed with carv­ings, unique pat­terns, etc. Often cov­ers the side faces of the gad­get (it has spe­cial slots for but­tons);

3. Flip / Punch — looks like a notepad. An over­lay is attached to the back pan­el of the device (while the side faces of the gad­get are not closed), made of leather, arti­fi­cial mate­r­i­al or plas­tic. The screen is closed with a flat part of the punch and fixed with a mag­net, Vel­cro, but­ton. The sur­face of the acces­so­ry can be addi­tion­al­ly dec­o­rat­ed with pat­terns, print­ed lace, etc.

4. The case is the max­i­mum pro­tec­tion against pos­si­ble “threats”. In addi­tion to the rear pan­el, it also reli­ably pro­tects the dis­play, includ­ing pre­vent­ing dust from get­ting inside.