I figure plenty of rich folks, Wu Lao Er included, have already moved on to the OnePlus 7 Pro. Me, I’m still on a OnePlus 5. Though my OnePlus 5 is really my backup phone. It’s fine, honestly. Performance holds up, no reason to replace it. Only the protector I’d stuck on it cracked, so I decided to get a new one. The protector I had on the OnePlus 5 before was from Fangshao. The coating on that one felt weird to me, not smooth enough — probably some knockoff coating from a small factory. Since the Nillkin protector on my Pixel 3 XL feels great and the coating is great too, I decided to give the Nillkin one for the OnePlus 5 a shot. Then I used it and cried.

Hi everyone, I dropped my phone again. And the protector I’d put on it shattered too, so my obsessive self is back to applying a new one. Both phones I have use curved screens, which makes protectors a pain to apply — not impossible, though. You need white edge liquid.

My XZP has been in for repairs a lot lately, and every time it comes back the film is gone… So I have to reapply one, and suddenly there are a lot more options for XZP films now — this “optical adhesive film” kind. I wrote about it before; this time it’s a domestic one called “Xiaoxiaoyulei”, and both the film itself and the optical adhesive are better quality than the Singapore one from before. Still, there are a few things to watch out for when applying it, to raise your success rate:

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’ve written before that for the OnePlus 5, the official protector is what I recommend. And for the Sony XZP, Banana’s soft film. Problem with soft film is it deforms easily and gets dirty fast — you’re basically replacing it every month. Which is when you start missing glass film. Shame that glass film on this thing always leaves a white edge. Sure, there’s white-edge oil, but it doesn’t last — two weeks tops and it’s gone, time to re-oil. And the stuff in those bottles really does seem to be just plain oil. Completely unreliable. Then I saw someone on XDA post a video of a fully transparent, fully laminated glass protector for the Sony XZP. And that’s when I noticed: the lamination process uses “optical adhesive” as the filler. It’s liquid going on, and sets into a semi-solid — way more trustworthy than oil. So I went looking for someone on eBay selling it, and what do you know, I found a seller offering liquid optical gel for white-edge repair. Tried it right away. Works well. Thicker than your average white-edge oil, but it still seeps into the edge just fine — a little pressure with your finger is enough.

Disclaimer: I haven’t taken money from any of the links below. If a shop wants to pay me, feel free to do it here. Whether you buy or not is your call—these are just my personal recommendations. Don’t come at me if you buy something and it sucks. And most importantly: if you’ve got the cash, I really don’t recommend using a screen protector at all. The Sony Xperia XZ Premium feels best naked—except it chips easily. Honestly, I’ve always thought curved screen designs are useless except for decorative light effects. That’s why I think Samsung’s various curved-screen phones are ugly as hell—like a piece of crystal-clear soap. I don’t know if anyone else likes square, boxy designs like I do. That’s why I’m willing to pay for Sony phones. I was also willing to pay for the Smartisan Pro—too bad Luo Yonghao wouldn’t give his own system stock Android. But sadly, even though the Sony Xperia series stuck with the square design for a long time, it eventually fell too and started doing curved screens. Based on my experience with the Xperia XZ Premium, this curved screen is completely useless. Maybe the corners feel better to hold, but the flat bottom still digs into your hand a bit. Sure, they added a bevel at the bottom to reduce the digging, which just proves you don’t need curved sides either—a bevel is enough. Anyway, you can’t make the whole thing curved like a crystal soap bar; doing it halfway is worse than not doing it at all. But regardless, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium already has a curved screen, which creates a big problem: screen protectors are a pain.