True antireflective screen protector, NOT matte

[Avalon11]

Hello. Does anybody know if there companies making antireflective coatings for screen protectors for phones, camera‘s and laptops? All I can find is just matt surface protectors. There is a lot misleading listings on Ebay saying that their screen protectors are antireflective but actually are just matt surfaces which actually are worse than glossy cover because they produce dull colors and reduce contrast. If you ever seen for example paintings, photo prints or just wood texture with glossy and matt varnish you will imidiatelly notice that glossy surface produces much more vibrant colors and contrast. Same goes for display covers especially as matt film gets further away from pixels it becomes more blurry. Of course glossy display needs to be looked from right angle to avoid seeing highlights from behind. Matt covers can seem to remove sharp bright reflections but all they do is merelly scatter light evenly in all directions.

Single AR coating or better multi layer coating has great advantages over matt cover. Uncoated glass reflects 4% of incomming light and further 4% when passing from glass to air due to internal reflection. Current quality AR multicoatings can reduce these reflections to just 1% in most of the visible spectrum. Ideally both glass sides should be coated but for screen external side will make bigger difference.

Knowing this I don‘t understand why even premium phones, laptops and camera covers don‘t use them, well at least when looking externally. Sure it can add up to manufacturing cost but it‘s totally worth having it on screens, camera and light covers.

I was a bit lucky to find Lumia 640 phone which seems to have at least single layer coating with purplish reflection. Better quality multicoatings have several layers for each wavelengh and most often they appear to have only slight viridian reflection.

Imagine how much light is lost due to reflection if there are multiple uncoated glass surfaces. Reflecting light can also contaminate image or in other words wash out darker colors.

It might be possible to get coating in optics facilities but there are limitations since surface needs to be clean and covers seem to have oleophobic coatings what might be a problem, but maybe they can be added later as well with hardening coatings (some AR materials are hard themselves as MgF2 or sapphire just too thin). Moreover it‘s going to be very costly and if possible at all. So it be be easier to produce AR coated stick on covers for phones, laptops, camera external/internal glass covers, filters and light sources.

Ngomad seems to be only company making 6 layer multicoating screen protectors but currently they make them only for Iphones, there are better specs phones such Huawei or Sony which should also have them.

 

[The_Chief]

Have you checked Armorsuit.com? Their Military Shield protectors are the ONLY ones I will use on my devices. They are about as matte as one can get, I imagine, and still be 100% transparent.

 

[Avalon11]

I have clearly stated that I need NOT matte glass protector.

 

[The_Chief]

Read it wrong, I apologize. Good Luck with your search - and if I come across anything promising, I'll let you know

 

[Hadron]

Ngomad seems to be only company making 6 layer multicoating screen protectors but currently they make them only for Iphones, there are better specs phones such Huawei or Sony which should also have them.

Better specs isn't the issue, it's whether there are enough owners of those models and whether enough of them are prepared to pay the premium for a coating that can survive the abrasion and exposure to acid from fingerprints (the hard, chemical-resistent AR coating on my specs costs more than most people will pay for a screen protector full stop). That's the judgement that the manufacturer has to make when deciding whether to make these things for a particular model, and although it doesn't help you I'm sure that's the reason they are so hard to find.

 

[Avalon11]

Even older Huawei P20 PRO phone has a lot better quality camera's than current Iphones, I guess they are so popular because off aggressive advertising and targeting poorly educated population.
Yes, that was thought why they could not add AR coatings on display since poor quality coating do have tendency peel off, some not resistant to scratching and chemical damage. However sapphire coating is very hard (9 on Mohs scale), in fact it's hardest transparent material available for display protectors and they are tough.
Anyway even damaged AR coated display is better than uncoated surface. With stick on display protectors there is always replacement option and eventually display develops scratches or even cracks.

 

[Hadron]

Sapphire is very scratch-resistent but it's also more reflective than glass. So you'd then want to add an anti-reflective coating to a screen protector that's already more expensive than any glass protector, which means the price will be even higher and hence the problem of choosing models that are popular enough with the demographic who might buy such a protector will be even more acute.

(On the other hand I'd be reluctant to buy a watch with anything other than sapphire for the crystal).

I don't own an iPhone, but I don't dismiss those who do so. They have their merits, even if the UI and locked-down nature isn't naturally to my taste. And while the camera is only one aspect of a phone (far from the most important for some of us), camera quality is also often subjective: many people praise photos that to my eye look horribly over-processed, or like colours that are clearly artificial (whenever a reviewer says "strong colours" or "punchy" I translate that as "over-saturated and unnatural, you'd hate it"). But none of that is relevant to the question of why more people don't make anti-reflective screen protectors for more models of phone, which as I say I'm sure comes down to their deciding that there isn't a bit enough market for them.

 

[Avalon11]

Anti reflective coating science is pretty complicated, you can read more in link below but to summarize it‘s simply single or multiple coatings on substrate such as glass of dielectric materials with different density/refractive index and thickness. Thickness of coating needs to be very precise to match wanted spectrum transmission and is typically done with magnetron sputtering technology for best quality. Saphhire has significantly higher refractive index thus works well on BK7 glass lens. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/opt...-design-principles-of-antireflection-coatings

AR coatings can also be made to block unwanted reflections for example harmful to eyes UV or high energy blue spectrum.

Ngomad actually uses novel AR coating UltraDepTM patented technology and achieves 0.7% reflectance. Here their listed benefits:

• Reflectance of outside light is reduced by 85% over glass or plastic

• Display contrast and viewability are improved by a factor of 4

• Display is noticeably brighter as internal reflection of light is also reduced 85%

• Reflection of harmful blue light reduced unlike other available AR coated products

• More durable than conventional PET screen protectors

• High quality Japanese base material with excellent anti-bubble wetting of outside light is reduced by 85% over glass or plastic .

Ngomad’s Enhancer overlay has 5H pencil hardness and claimed to be very durable.

I‘m interested actually more in technological hardwave improvement and like to see cutting edge technology use for example much more efficient graphene based components or Mini/MicroLED displays which are superior to OLED/LCD. Software is course also very important factor but there is a lot flexibility today especially with Android OS, however there is little to no possibilities to change hardwave in phones.

Camera can be pretty important component in phone especially when in some premium models they becoming so good that they can replace professional mirrorless/DSLR camera’s and already make obsolete compact camera’s. One thing is getting better quality unprocessed images based on physics science and other thing is post processing which is more artistic in nature. That’s why ability to shoot in RAW format can be great. Huawei/Honor manufacturers did put a lot of effort into bringing phone camera quality closer to professional by some incredible engineering to squeeze as large as possible sensors and wide aperture/great zoom lens in such thin phone design. They also use monochrome or RGBW camera’s and pixel binning to additionally increase sensitivity which phones lack so much.

 

[Avalon11]

Newly released Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 phone camera protector features Gorilla DX glass with AR coatings It helps let in more light, reduce ghosting halo in images around bright light and also is more scratch resistant almost like sapphire crystal which is hardest mineral used in displays. I'm getting it to replace camera protector for Huawei P20 PRO and later also P50 PRO. There are no yet phone screen protectors but Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 screen will use even better Gorilla DX+ crystal glass.