Protecting your Phone

Weakest Screen 

Our phones, more accurately Cell Phones, have become nearly a necessary portion of our dailey gear.  In fact today more and more people have more need to carry their smartphone than they do their own wallet.  With digital wallets and payment options linked significantly now to our cell phones many can walk around and show off their identification when necessary without ever touching, possibly even owning, a wallet.  In the same fashion with more and more payment options being linked to the cell phones such as Samsung Wallet, Google Wallet, and Apple Wallet being accepted by merchants and vendors throughout the world we are being more connected to our smart phone than we are to the physical wallet every year.  Even now a large portion of our new vehicles now come with keyless features which include the ability to unlock and even start our vehicles with the touch of a button on a mobile device interface even if your key fob is nowhere near the car.  Finally even some home door locks can be unlocked with the use of a phone.  Due to all of that you can leave your home with only your phone in your pocket.  No need for keys, wallet, physical cash, or identification and still get most if not all of your tasks completed.  As much as I try to separate from technology on occasion I have to admit that our progression towards one device to rule them is making our phones a necessary portion of our everyday gear.  That being said, we need to consider methods to protect that essential item sitting in our pockets! 

Durable? 

Protection 

       Despite that, let's face facts.  That test of time I mentioned earlier carries on and on and the hurdles that come our way through that test of time we can't always predict when our phone is going to fall.  It's completely unpredictable when our kids are going to come rushing around the corner clipping the phone right out of our hand or off the table it's sitting upon.  It's equally possible that we drop our phone out of our entirely too shallow pockets or as we try to carry all of our groceries in a single bound while also talking on our phone.  Life happens and sometimes it's our mobile phones that take hits.  It's for these reasons we have to work towards protecting our devices.  We don't know when those impacts are going to come and we have to protect our devices so that they are ready for those impacts.  These protections come in multiple forms.  We have cases to protect that majority of the phone.  There are also screen protectors.  We have to be careful however as not all device protectors are of the same quality.

When walking around the local mall I noticed a kiosk in the center of the mall that was loaded with cases.  I stopped and looked through the glass cases at all of them.  The person working in the center of the rectangular shaped kiosk watched my every move while making comments to try and convince me to buy something.  Little did the employee know I had no interest in any of his products.  They all looked nice from a cosmetic standpoint.  Some were shiny while others were sparkling but not a single one seemed to have any possibility of protecting my phone from a drop or fall.  The kiosk was clearly designed to deceive a person into thinking they were buying protection but in reality all they are really purchasing is a lot of bling.  You have to make sure that the case you buy has a degree of ability to protect your phone.  If it's made out of flimsy plastic that is easy to put on or take off your phone you pretty much haven’t done anything to protect your phone.  Does it have any thickness so that when your phone lands it's not sustaining a direct impact onto the screen?  If it just lands flat then the case didn't do anything.  Is the case made out of impact absorbing material or something that is going to send impact force right into your phone?  Many cases don't fit the bill in one way or any at all when protecting your device.  Do you know the worst part about the kiosk in the mall?  The prices of those cases were actually not much different than cases that actually do protect your device at other locations!  What's the lesson here, be careful not to fall for a case that won't protect your device when it falls.

What else should you do to protect your device?  Let us not forget the weakest part of the phone, the screen!  The screen is by far the most likely part of your phone to become broken or non-operational.  Though a case may protect the screen to a point most cases don't actually fully protect the phone's screen.  In those cases you need to get yourself a reliable screen protector.  What is a screen protector?  Typically it's an extra layer made of a material that absorbs the shock of an impact, keeping the screen from receiving the full brunt of force from that impact.  Many times we have to replace our screen protectors a great deal because instead of your phone's actual screen cracking the screen protector does crack as it absorbs that force.  That is the screen protector doing its job.  Like the cases mentioned above, not all screen protectors are of the same quality.

I have seen some screen protectors that are so breakable that they can break as you put them onto the cell phones screen.  In cases where the screen protector breaks that easily it will offer a small degree of protection but not as much as a better protector.  Other screen protectors work very well but don't adhere for as long as expected.  Some will just pop off especially when moving them in and out of your pocket.  It's even worse if it's a tight pocket that holds that device.  In the end you want to choose a screen protector that works well but doesn't have to be replaced. That often also will hurt the wallet whether it's a digital wallet or otherwise.

Stay tuned for some upcoming product reviews coming to you from Kiser Technologies.

Walter Kiser 10/28/2024