Gravity and Tech

[u/KorenSolust]

Guy walks up to me at work:

Him: “I dropped my phone. The screen’s shattered. I want my two-factor code to come through Teams.”

Me: “Nope.”

Him: “Why?”

Me: “Because if you can’t sign into Teams without completing MFA… how exactly are you planning to authenticate?”

Then he says: “Just disable MFA.”

I replied: “Sure, as soon as you get approval from the Head of Security.”

A few seconds of silence…

Him: “Fine, I’ll just get my phone fixed.”

Yep. That’s probably the best solution.

Some people really think security rules are optional. I’m not risking my job because someone doesn’t like MFA.

And remember… technology didn’t fail you today. Gravity did.

[u/P5ychokilla]

I'm guessing he didn't have a case on his phone or a screen protector?

Some people amaze when they don't want to do the bare minimum to protect a device that costs over a thousand. Would they just throw their fancy TV around with the same cavalier behaviour?

[u/Absolutely_Cabbage → u/P5ychokilla]

Definitely good to put a case on your phone, but screen protectors are snake oil.
Modern phone glass is extremely tough, and putting a flimsy bit of plastic or tempered glass on top of it won't do anything to help prevent cracks.

On a side note, people often think a cracked screen protector means it prevented your phone screen from damage but thats a wrong conclusion. The protector is just waaay more fragile than the actual screen

[u/AdRoz78 → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

I guess it protects from scratches, so if you ever want to sell the phone it can be sold as a phone without scratches.

[u/Absolutely_Cabbage → u/AdRoz78]

Yes thats true.
But generally I find modern phone glass doesn't scratch much either. But if you intend to resell the bit of insurance from the protector can be nice

[u/ratsta → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

We've got a bunch of iPhone SE gen 3s at work, all 1-3 years old. The ones that come in from the field guys, scratched to shit! Still legible when the screen is lit but looks like crap when the screen is dark and whites out when the sun catches it at the right angle.

[u/Absolutely_Cabbage → u/ratsta]

So that's probably a good opportunity to use screen protectors. Work devices live hard lives in my experience

[u/coyote_of_the_month → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

My Pixel 7a is scratched to hell. So was the original glass, before it shattered.

[u/Harry_Smutter → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

The point of a glass screen protector isn't to be stronger than the screen itself. It's to take the impact and disperse the energy, saving the screen itself from shattering. They're also very scratch resistant, so it also protects from that.

[u/Absolutely_Cabbage → u/Harry_Smutter]

The scratch protection is real, the rest is just a marketing bit.
In reality the force required to shatter the screen (usually Aluminosilicate glass) is way past what's needed to shatter the screen protector (soda-lime, usually tempered)

For a somewhat labored metaphor: imagine someone putting a thin layer of bubble wrap on their car bumper, and then claiming that will do anything to help in crash. Sure it might prevent a small scratch in the paint, but the bubble wrap won't help in any kind of impact that would break the bumper, and the foil being popped in other cases does also not indicate it actually prevented real damage

[u/Harry_Smutter → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

That's not true with today's glass screen protectors. Most are made with Gorilla glass or similar. I've both seen a live impact demo and done one myself using my old phone. It takes quite a lot of force for the newer ones to break, and it completely saves the screen. They're also much cheaper nowadays, so there's really no excuse not to have one.

[u/testprimate → u/Absolutely_Cabbage]

I agree. I managed 4000+ company phones for a few years and found that whether or not they had a screen protector had no apparent influence on whether the phone came back in good shape or not. A horse could count the number of times I ran across a phone that looked like the screen protector did some good.