Quick and cheap anti-fingerprint trick

Ah hahahahahahaha!

 

An interesting side-note... ALL the scratches I've ever had on any of my screens were extremely superficial and were all in straight lines, usually in the direction running top to bottom and were there and created by wiping the screen. It's amazing how microscopic debris on the screen, trapped in your fingerprints, and/or already on the rag, paper towel (REAL BAD CHOICE), or other wiping material can actually create these extremely tiny scratches. Generally you can't see the scratches unless you use the sun or a bright light and catch it casting off the glass at the right angle. They then look hideous but are really so thin and superficial that you can't even feel them with your fingernail.

By comparison, before Gorilla Glass there would not only be more scratches, but they'd be deeper, easy to feel with the fingernail, and there would even be a "frosted" ares of the glass representing the area where you are most often moving your fingers while selecting menus and such, and essentially scratching the frost-like haze onto the surface of the glass with the dirt in your fingerprints. Anybody ever looked at their fingertips under a microscope? I'll tell you it looks like a gravel driveway, with all the dirt and oils collected in those tiny lines. And when you swipe your finger across the glass, you're essentially dragging a piece of superfine grit sand paper across the glass with your finger.

I'm far from a clean freak, but I do tend to wash my hands perhaps more vigorously than others (I see guys in the restrooms stick them under water and then towel dry - no soap!). I will NOT use my fingertips to activate or operate my phone if they are dirty and instead will use a nuckle if I have to until I can clean them again.

 

I use glass screen protectors. Usually 2 per life of the phone. They start coming unglued about 6 months in from me sitting on my phone.

I just wipe my phone on my shirt and fingerprints are gone. I don't have any scratches on the protector which always tempts me to just get rid of it altogether.

 

The thing is, screen protectors are generally made of some sort of plastic (polymer), and being "softer" than Glass, will scratch less easily and instead will "yield" to some minor abrasives. Glass on the other hand can't "yield" (deform), and so instead the abrasives will gouge out a microscopic layer of the Glass surface, resulting in what we see as a scratch. Under a microscope those minute scratches look like the Grand Canyon, where a huge bolder was dragged through the earth.

 

Another bonus of the glass screen protector is that it slightly countersinks my home button and now the phone won't turn on in my pocket due to the home button being pressed.

I hate plastic screen protectors. They feel bad and often distort the screen clarity. The best ones are the matte protectors, but they absolutely slay the display when you put them on.