Quote:
Originally Posted by Nexutix
Capacitive touch-screens don't usually scratch as they are used with soft skin part of your fingers; although accidents may scratch the screen. I recommend you get one.
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Personally, I recommend you don't, and don't put one on your capacitive-touch smartphone/tablets, either.
Screen protectors made sense back in the days of resistive touch screens used with pointing styluses, requiring excessive pressure to register inputs. Modern touch screens are either capactive (on smartphones and tablets) or infrared (current e-ink touch devices).
Capacitive screens do not require the pressure needed to register input on a resistive screen, and as Nexutix said are manipulated with the fleshy bits of fingers. More importantly, they're covered with scratch-resistant glass as opposed to the flimsy plastics used on resistive screens (by their very nature, resistive screens must flex, or they could not complete the circuit that causes them to detect input). The risk of scratching a modern capacitive screen is miniscule and even the best screen covers cause a loss in sensitivity (it's one more layer between your nice, conductive finger and the capacitive elements that sense it).
Infrared screens also do not require the pressure of an old resistive screen, and have the same durable coating as non-touch e-ink screens. The IR grid is projected on top of the screen and touch points are calculated by occlusion of the IR beams. The IR transmitters and receivers are built into the bezel of the screen and project micrometers above the face of the screen. Apply too thick of a screen protector and you'll lose all touch functionality (or worse, send the device into an epileptic seizure when it thinks it's being touched everywhere all at once, all the time). If you must use a screen protector on a touch e-ink screen, make sure you buy a protector designed specifically for that screen.
In either case, you're pretty much only going to risk the occasional smudge and even that can be minimized with clean hands. But then I also believe that if device manufacturers wanted you to use screen protectors they'd ship the devices when them already installed. They don't, so I won't compromise my usage by installing one. In 3+ years of smartphone/tablet/touch e-ink ownership I've not yet scratched any screen despite not using any screen protector or case on any of my devices.