Will tempered glass protectors be effective on E-Ink screens?

[Feher]

Will tempered glass protectors be effective for e-ink screens?

Tempered glass protectors provide robust protection for mobiles and tablets. Since i applied tempered glass protector, I have dropped my mobile 4 times and there has been no damage at all. I am very happy and would like to apply them to my eReaders. But i have doubts that they may not be effective on eink screens.

Mobile screens and e-ink screen are very different in construction. E-ink screens are relatively fragile. In e-ink screens backplane or substrate is made of glass. Since the tempered glass will be applied on the front, will it protect the screen or it will unnecessarily increase the pressure?


(P.S. Getting tempered glass is not a problem. I will cut a large tempered glass according to the device dimensions)

[elcreative]

Not sure about pressure but is likely to seriously interfere with touch screens of all types...

[jgaiser]

I'm not sure what you think you are going to gain. Unless you *completely* replace the glass in the ereader, I don't think you are gaining any protection. My iPhone 4s has been dropped multiple times with a simple cover without damage.

[Feher]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Not sure about pressure but is likely to seriously interfere with touch screens of all types...

Touchscreen is not affected when using tempered glass protector on capacitive touchscreen based mobiles (though i have no idea about infrared touch based devices). I prefer tempered glass to normal plastic screen lamination/guards.

I also put tempered glass on wacom digitizer touch based tablet and there was no change in performance.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I'm not sure what you think you are going to gain. Unless you *completely* replace the glass in the ereader, I don't think you are gaining any protection. My iPhone 4s has been dropped multiple times with a simple cover without damage.

For mobiles, tempered glass acts as an extra layer of protection. If there is a chance that the screen is going to break, then tempered glass will bear the damage and save the screen. Also, it prevents actual screen from scratches. Visibility and Touch are not at all affected. Touch is as smooth as bare screen.

I am trying to find if tempered glass will serve the same purpose for an ereader.

[Feher]

On a related note,
E-Ink Screen front panel is made up of Glass or Plastic?

[pdurrant]

An E-Ink screen doesn't have a front panel. The surface is the E-Ink layer. Unless it's a front-lit model, in which case there is a thin light guide layer in front of it. But, as far as I know, these are still all essentially plastic.

I doubt that retro-fitting a glass protector in front of the screen will help to protect the back-plane, which seem to be most vulnerable to point pressure and torsion stress, rather than side impact.

I'm still hoping that we'll see E-Ink screens in mainstream devices with metal or plastic backplanes at some point, which will probably make the screen the most robust bit of the ereader..

[HarryT]

This would be completely pointless. It's not the plastic outer screen that's fragile on an eInk device, but the thin glass substrate that's underneath it.

[Feher]

Thank You pdurrant and HarryT .

This answers my question and i won't be applying the tempered glass. I didn't knew that metallic backplane was also a possibility. Next, I will study eink construction is detail in my free time.