Living with iPhone 8

First I bought an iPhone 8, since Suning had a special deal a while back. You had to pay a deposit, but overall it was much cheaper than the Apple official site…

After ordering you wait two days to pay, but once paid it arrives the same day — seems to be picked up from Suning’s local Zhengzhou warehouse.

Got it in hand and it just feels small. Really small…

I also applied a screen protector and bought a case. From what I know, I’d personally recommend the products from “Dakang Youxuan” on Weibo. For the protector I personally recommend the non-full-coverage version, since the full-coverage one covers the screen edges.

The case is of course the liquid silicone version I’ve always liked, cheaper than the official one but same quality. In hand, this red looks a bit different from the official red of the OnePlus 5 — this one leans rose red.

Overall I’m pretty satisfied. The phone doesn’t look too ugly either. Have to sigh at how many accessories Apple makes, and the quality is good. Other non-mainstream products’ accessories are just tragically bad.

The downside is it’s too damn small, but it’s not for me so whatever.

Also I hear the iPhone 8 supports wireless charging, so I plan to buy a cheap one to try.

Recently I noticed the ESR glass film originally applied to my Surface Pro 4 kept getting white edges for no reason. At first I used some white-edge oil to mask it, but the white edge would show up on top and bottom after covering it. After observing, I think the optical adhesive in this batch of ESR films is just garbage — high temperatures make the adhesive dry out…

So I had to search Taobao for another brand, and finally found a maker called Baoshili with pretty high ratings, though I noticed many reviews were very formulaic…

Bought it with a try-it-out attitude to replace the ESR one, and after it arrived I was pleasantly surprised.

First, this product’s film really is tempered glass, and it really has a coating — and the coating is great. Also better than ESR: its cutouts are smaller, and it has curved edges!

ESR claims curved edges but really doesn’t have them, while this one actually does.

Still, the first one I got was a bit of a fail…

Because of the packaging, the sticker on one corner got folded, which dried out the adhesive on that corner… and it wouldn’t stick properly when applied.

I told the Taobao seller and they were straightforward, saying they’d send a new one. Then the seller started hoping I’d give a good review. Honestly there’s nothing wrong with a good review for this product — I think it’s well made. But they wanted me to copy-paste their provided content… and add a follow-up review too.

I really don’t get it. If your product has no problems and you’re sincere, why pull this stunt and make your reviews look fake? What’s the point?

Of course the replacement film hasn’t arrived yet. I dabbed some optical adhesive on that corner and it’s invisible now, so the new one can be a backup.