• Russ@bitforged.space
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    11 months ago

    That looks awesome! I can’t imagine myself being able to apply a skin, I can’t even get a screen protector to go on correctly 😅

    • BlueFairyPainter@feddit.deOP
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      11 months ago

      The screen protector you see on mine is the second one because I fumbled the first and it still has bubbles. So as someone who also struggles with screen protectors: it’s not the same.
      Yes, it has a lot more pieces, some of which are quite thin and fragile and you need more patience to follow the instructions properly and the whole process takes a lot longer, which may seem daunting.
      But the material is so, so much more forgiving than the average screen protector.

      First of all, it’s not transparent, so trapping some stuff that doesn’t have much height like fine dust and fingerprints is not an issue, since you can’t see it.
      This means that you don’t have to drop everything into place perfectly on the first try. Because a small amount of fingerprints is not an issue, you can fumble around with it a lot more. Because fine dust is not an issue, you can also take your time doing it.
      Secondly, even if you do trap larger pieces of dust, unlike rigid screen protectors that create a huge penny-sized bubble dome around it, skins are meant to wrap tightly around complex shapes, so in my case I just have a teenie tiny bump exactly the size of the dust + skin thickness, which is barely noticeable.
      The glue on my skin also seems different and more forgiving to ripping and reapplying. In particular, you can reposition things a lot of times before pressing down to fixate it for good. So you can e.g. fixate one side, then lightly drape the skin across to match the cutouts on the other side, then fixate that side, and then smooth out the middle parts.
      Which takes us to bubbles. Whenever the flat skin doesn’t fit the 3D shape 100%, you’ll get a lot of wrinkles and bubbles and that is totally fine. With the hairdryer, you can melt the material into place and most of my bubbles disappeared completely. The few that didn’t turned into tiny creases at the ends. I think this is the only imperfection to expect. It’s really hard not to get any creases and you don’t get more tries here because you need to press down to smooth out the bubbles, so you can’t reapply.
      But that’s it. Everything else can be repositioned until it’s perfect, so the only thing it really takes is patience.

      • Russ@bitforged.space
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        11 months ago

        That’s good to know, thanks! I might actually have to look into giving it a go one day, maybe for an old phone at first just for some practice so to speak.

        • BlueFairyPainter@feddit.deOP
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          11 months ago

          A good quality skin should be cleanly removable, so unless the phone skin is much cheaper, there’s not much benefit to practicing on the phone first. I wouldn’t worry so much.

          Also sorry for randomly info-dumping that wall of text, oh god. I tend to do that when I’m obsessed with something haha ^^"

          • Russ@bitforged.space
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            11 months ago

            It’s all good, I appreciated the advice and tips! Funnily enough, I have that exact reputation at work, to be honest I’d rather be too descriptive than not descriptive enough 😅

            There’s certainly a balancing act to be played of course, but if that balance ends up being impossible for me, then more information (in my opinion) is better!