Compass & Quill

I just spent 20 minutes being extremely frustrated, so once I figured out a solution, it seemed only right to share it with others. A few months ago I bought my very first smartphone, a LG G2X. It’s a great phone, but lately the screen protector had gotten to look a bit shabby. It was the first one that came with the phone, and though it still worked great, it was just time to put a new one on. Luckily, when I bought the phone, I also thought to buy a pack of screen protectors for later use, so I had a couple sitting around, which was handy.

At first the process seemed pretty easy – peel off the old protector, open up the new protector, and apply – voila! Except. I’m a bit of a lint magnet. I’ve never met anyone who naturally attracts dust and lint like I do – I’m a real life Pigpen, and I spend a lot of time cleaning house as a result, though it never seems to make much of a dent. Anyway, I applied the first protector, it looked great, then I noticed there was a speck of dust. No problem. I attempted to squeeze it out using my fingernail – no luck. So then I lifted up the protector and used my finger to brush it out, which worked. Except then when I put the screen protector back down there were now several more pieces of dust embedded in under the protector. So then I attempted to use the little dust cleaning cloth that came with the protector, which of course just left more lint and dust trapped there. Finally I gave up and opened another new protector, applied, and proceeded to go through the entire drama again. Then I got a great idea – I’ll wash it! Washing with warm soapy water does indeed remove all of the lint, but drying with any kind of cloth or towel makes much more lint, and trying to blow dry just blew lint into the screen. Maybe you can figure out a way to make that work, but I couldn’t.

At that point I gave up and went online for help. I found this wonderful article about removing dust from your mobile phone screen protector, which was helpful to a point, since the author was concentrating on what happens when your screen is dusty – not your protector, itself, as was my conundrum. After reading the author’s advice to “dab the area of the phone screen where the air bubble is with the sticky side of scotch tape” I had an idea that luckily paid off. What about dabbing the protector itself with scotch tape?

Since by this time the entire protector was covered in a layer of lint and dust from its contact with multiple cloths/etc. meant to clean off lint, I tore off pieces of scotch tape about an inch longer than the protector, and applied them in overlapping strips until the entire side of the protector that applies to the phone screen was covered. Since all of the pieces of tape were overlapping, when I gently tugged, all of the strips came off at the same time, removing all of the lint at once and allowing me to quickly put the protector back on the phone screen before any more lint found its way onto the protector or screen. It went on perfectly, with only one piece of lint stuck between the layers. I made a little loop of scotch tape, then gently peeled up the protector, rolled the loop of tape over where the lint was on the protector, then patted it back down again. There are no bubbles or visible lint/hair/etc. pieces on my phone screen now.

After figuring all of this out, I then found another page about how to apply a screen protector without getting dust in between the protector and screen, which advised users to get the bathroom really steamy and do the application in there, but there are lots of other steps that are a little too intense and time consuming for me (dish detergent & water on the protector, application, waiting until it dries). I think I’ll stick with my tape solution, but please do share if you’ve found your own stress-free way to keep your phone screen shiny and new!