As much as I love having a smartphone, I do hate how fragile they are. Admittedly glass touchscreens are much stronger than they were 15 years ago, but glass is far from the most durable material around. Even if you’re extremely careful, you’re still likely to pick up quite a few scratches unless you opt for some extra protection.
As much as I wouldn’t go without a screen protector, I hate the things with a passion. Whether we’re talking tempered glass or the old-school plastic films, I’ve always struggled to apply a screen protector without messing something up — usually bubbles or some stray particles of dust — to the point where I often just give up and pick up a phone case with its own removable screen protector.
But with my latest phone, the Pixel 9 Pro, I found a screen protector that makes the whole process idiot proof with some very smart design — and the right plastic tool.
Fixing the biggest issue with screen protectors
The problem with screen protectors is that there are so many things that can go wrong. Often that means being left with trapped air or dust under the cover, forever stuck as a monument to your failures. But in my experience I’ve also been faced with corners that won’t stick down properly or a simple misalignment that I can’t really fix without starting from scratch.
The latter has mostly been fixed thanks to accessory-makers offering plastic placement tools with their screen protectors. Essentially acting as an extension of your phone screen’s bezel, it’s a guiding tool for your screen protector to make sure it doesn’t end up crooked or covering up crucial features like the front camera. LK’s screen protector kits take that latter principle, and push it in an all new direction.
Here the plastic tool isn’t meant as a guide for you to apply the screen protector. Instead it’s holding the screen protector in place to do all that hard work for you. The hardest part for you is making sure that your phone screen is clean before you begin.
Once the tool is in place, you simply pull the tab which removes the protective film from the bottom of the tempered glass screen protector. Once that’s out of the way you tap the glass and watch all the air escape as the screen protector sticks to your phone. In theory, this is supposed to remove all air bubbles automatically, but I did need to give a couple of them a helping hand.
There are two crucial benefits to this approach, the most obvious of which is that you get perfect placement and no crooked screen protectors. Most importantly, there’s very little opportunity for dust to get between the screen and the screen protector during the application process.
That’s always the part that ruins my attempts to apply a screen protector, and the few seconds between prepping the glass and actually applying it to my phone is ample opportunity for stray dust particles to land somewhere they shouldn’t.
Minimizing the time and distance during that process made the whole thing infinitely less stressful, to the point where I didn’t wish I had access to a clean room just to keep my gadgets safe from damage.
Making screen protectors more accessible
As much as I have historically disliked applying screen protectors, I’ve learned that they’re a necessary evil. I haven’t had any shattered display glass for a good 8 years now, but that doesn’t change the fact that damage can and will occur to varying degrees. It doesn’t matter how strong the display glass gets, it doesn’t take long for me to start noticing scratches on the display, even if they are super-fine scratches that are only visible in really bright light. But they are there, and there’s something about the permanence of seeing those scratches that makes my heart sink.
I know full well that screen protectors, even tempered glass, are far more prone to damage and can take a beating before they need replacing. But you can replace them, and they tend not to cost very much.
I know I’d much rather pay a few dollars on a new screen protector than however many tens or hundreds it costs to replace the display, especially if this kind of application method takes on — and I hope it does. In the months since I first picked one of these up, it seems the amount of choice for so-called “auto-installation” screen protectors has increased by quite a bit.
Not all of them have the pull-tab, though, which feels like it defeats the purpose. That’s the thing I appreciate most about LK’s approach, since that’s what makes the application so simple to do. If this method does become a lot more widespread, there wouldn’t be any excuse to not have a screen protector on your phone.
Using this method, I had no more difficulty applying a screen protector than I would putting my phone inside a case. That extra accessibility would be key to helping keep everyone’s’ phone screens in much better condition — especially for the people who don’t buy the ultra-premium phones with the latest and best display glass. The Google Pixel 8a, one of the best cheap phones, still uses the 12-year old Gorilla Glass 3 for its protection.
So you kind of need that extra protection, and the easier it is to apply the more likely people are to have it — even if it takes a while for the word to get out.
Bottom line
It’s weird to be singing the praises of something so mundane as a screen protector, especially when I know there are plenty of people out there that don’t bother with this phone add-on. But maybe people don’t bother because screen protectors can be a major pain if you’re not careful. That’s where application tools like the one LK offers come into play by simplifying that whole process and taking all the stress out of the equation.
I’ve burned through so many botched application attempts over the years that the prospect of doing it again makes me pretty anxious, even after applying two screen protectors with the auto-application tool. But the second time, I didn’t actively dread the process, and the fact it went off without a hitch is quite liberating — and I encourage other people to try.
Whether it’s this particular company or someone with a similar tool, you might be surprised at how easy it all is. Completely idiot-proof, and I am a walking example of how accurate that description is.
