Now, I’ve never been particularly precious when it comes to phones – in my view you have a phone to do a job and the chances are that you’ll change your phone every 18 months or so – so why bundle the little darling up in cotton wool? I mean, the lengths some people go to in order to prevent the slightest mark on their unit is quite staggering. Take the 1st gen iPhone for example; for me , it was a case of out of the box and into my pocket – job done. Whereas, some people I know (hi Adam), find it necessary to put every new phone inside some armour plated case that would protect the phone from everything bar a nuclear strike. This just doesn’t make a lot of sense: firstly, the case in question will often add to the overall bulk of the phone and, secondly, the whilst the case may indeed do a great job of protecting the phone, you still end up looking at a battered case. Unless these people remove their phone from its case and simply stare at their beautifully pristine unit each evening – I don’t see the benefit.
If you can apply the front without any air bubbles then you'll hardly know it's there.
Having said that… the 1st gen iPhone was a bit like a bar of soap. The number of times the darned thing slipped out of my fingers was quite ridiculous and, given the really quite impressive heights the phone sometimes fell from, I was certainly lucky that I never smashed the screen. The iPhone 3G addressed this issue to a certain degree by changing the back of the phone from brushed aluminum to a slightly tacky black plastic, which meant that the sides of the phone were much easier to grip – especially when picking the phone up, which is usually when I found my 1st gen taking a tumble.
So, there I was in Carphone Warehouse signing my life away in the name of the iPhone 3Gs and, rather out of character, I found myself looking at cases. There’s a bewildering selection, ranging from the ugly and truly ridiculous, to the really quite clever and rather intriguing. The one that caught my eye was a thing called the Invisible Shield by a company called Zagg. It’s basically a tough film that you put over your phone to protect it from scratches and scrapes but which adds no bulk at all to the phone’s form. If I was ever going to go down the case route this would be the kind of thing that I would go for… and so it ended up on the shop counter along with the 3Gs and a car charger…
Now the one thing that the Invisible Shield packaging does not tell you is how terrifyingly finickity the application procedure can be. All this rather pertinent information is carefully tucked away inside the box – because if you knew what was lying ahead of you as you bought your Invisible Shield you would probably think better of it.
The Invisible Shield comes in two parts: front and back, each needing to be applied separately. The shield itself is a die-cut transparent film which is incredibly tough and scratch resistant – and also, when you peel it off its backing paper, incredibly sticky! In essence, all you need to do is simply apply the film smoothly and accurately over the phone’s screen and back – and you’ll be good to go. Now, unless your day job involves applying cling-film to smooth surfaces, you will probably find applying the Invisible Shield is way harder than it looks. The advice in the instructions is to wash your hands before you start and to spray your fingers with the water-like application spray that comes in the pack. The principle is to spray the sticky side of the invisible shield with the application liquid to allow for precise aligning when sticking the film to the phone, at which point you then squeegee said liquid out from under the film using a credit card sized piece of plastic (also supplied in the pack). Nice idea but the film is incredibly tacky! Just like cling-film, if you let two parts of the film touch each other – you’re pretty well stuffed. You really need to apply much more of the liquid than you might think, otherwise you’ll find that the film will stick to everything – including your fingers. I started off thinking that too much spray would be a bad thing but, sure enough, the film stuck to my fingers which subsequently left behind beautiful finger prints which were then clearly visible when the film was applied to the phone – Horatio Caine eat your heart out! Seriously though, if you do nothing else, do apply the shield with completely clean hands and ensure you spray your fingers first. I would also suggest ensuring that you are in a breeze and dust-free environment because anything that gets caught by the sticky side of the shield will never come off and will be plainly visible once the shield is attached to the phone.
Thankfully, you can peel the film off and re-pply it without damaging its appearance. On my third attempt (and this time using much more spray than before) I managed to get the film correctly aligned with the edge of the screen so I could start squeegeeing out the liquid. This process is fairly straightforward but do be aware that, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up squeegeeing the liquid directly into the phone’s earpiece, so always ensure you squeegee from the centre out and you should be ok. Next the back piece.
One of the last remaining air bubbles on the back - just to the left of the Apple logo.
Having done the front pretty well (after three attempts), I assumed the back should be fairly straightforward, after all, I had now honed my skills and knew what I was doing – or so I thought. The back-peice of the Invisible Shield has an alien form. The back piece is a complicated shape because it has to mould both round corners as well as over the curved back of the iPhone. The trick seems to be to align the film to the camera lens (the film has a hole for the lens so I figured that if I get that centred and the top of the film square to the edge of the phone and I should be ok), and indeed I was – the film was pretty much aligned perfectly after the first attempt – great! The squeegeeing this time, however, was a different matter. As I mentioned, the back piece of the Invisible Shield is an unusual shape – it’s comprised of the main body along with little arms coming off at the sides and corners that are supposed to wrap neatly around the corners and edges of the iPhone – all these bits need to be stuck down properly if your shield is to have any reasonable working life. The squeegeeing process on the back of the phone was a lot harder than the front due to the curved back – as soon as one area was flat, a new bubble would appear elsewhere. After much squeegeeing and sweating, you will eventually get to a point where most areas are reasonably bubble free, however, be prepared to stop because there will inevitably be some bubbles that just will not shift – and with the rest of the film stuck down, it really will not be worth lifting the film and starting all over again just to get rid of them. So, you then move onto the edges. Zagg suggest you use their method called palming for this job – they even provide you with a link to their instruction video to see how to do it (there are also other videos available on YouTube such as this one). Eventually, after much faffing you’ll get most of the corners and edges stuck down and your Invisible Shield has been applied.
Zagg tell you that you should leave the phone for 24 hours to allow the shield to ‘cure’. Bollocks to that – my spanking new iPhone has only seen the light of day for a couple of hours – do you really think that I’m now going to leave it sitting on a shelf for a whole day?! In fact, I left mine for just a few hours and the shield was as secure as anything. So, there I was, in the space of an afternoon I had acquired a new iPhone which was now fully protected by an Invisible Shield. In all the application process only took about 15 minutes and were I to do it again, I could probably shave another 5 off that. I ended up with a damn near perfect front and a somewhat disappointing back. The back had a good few air bubbles and one of the corners had not stuck down properly. However, as Zagg tell you, slight imperfections do sort themselves out over a number of days and this is true. I now have just two visible air bubbles on the back as the gas manages to dissipate somehow. The corner, however, still wont stick down properly and I suspect this will be the place where the shield fails when it eventually does.
This dodgy corner is where the shield will fail - it just wont stick down.
So, what do I think? At £15 for two pieces of plastic the Invisible Shield is not cheap (Zagg offer you a free lifetime replacement which I guess they can easily afford to do given the likely margin on this product). However, despite the price, I do like the product. The shield adds a further layer of ‘gripability’ to the phone as well as protecting it from key and coin scratches if you carry your phone in your trouser pocket as I tend to do. The shield also seems to repel finger smudges far better than Apple’s olephobic coating, whilst not interfering at all with the touch functions of the iPhone. At some point, I imagine the edges of the shield will lift but, at present, they are showing no signs of doing so – and so long as the shield remains firmly affixed to the phone – I can see myself being happy it’s there.
Why did I bother writing all that? Well, really because I think the product itself is actually very good – but if you’re ever considering an Invisible Shield at least you’re now forewarned as to what lies ahead of you. If you have a friend who’s a modelmaker, I suggest you ask them to apply the shield for you. Otherwise – make sure you wash your hands first and take a deep breath!
