After one scary moment where my life flashed before my eyes – I’d never be without this on my iPhone again

Phones are getting thinner, but so many of us wrap them in covers and protectors that it’s often difficult to notice. It feels almost foolish not to take every effort to protect your handset, especially if you’ve just spent thousands of pounds or dollars on it. Yes, you can get and claim on insurance, but that will still cost you in the long run.

I spent a year using an iPhone without a case or screen protector and didn’t drop it once – perhaps knowing it lacked protection made me more careful? Or maybe it was luck. So when I watched my iPhone 17 Pro fall (in slow motion) onto the bathroom floor, I was very glad I didn’t continue without the casing.

When I picked my phone up, which had of course landed face down, I noticed a chip at the top of the display, and then a thin crack extending down the phone. This is a sight that brings tears to many eyes and that deep fear in the pit of your stomach of how much the replacement is going to be.

Luckily for me, not only did I choose to put a case on my iPhone 17 Pro, but I also put a screen protector on it. So in fact, though it looked bad, it was only the screen protector that had cracked – not my screen. Peeling the broken protector sheet off revealed that my display was completely undamaged.

A good screen projector is designed not only to protect your screen from scratches but also to disperse the impact of a drop, and break if required, so the screen underneath doesn’t. Not all screen protectors are equal, of course. Some are simple plastic builds, while others are actual glass.

With my old screen protector discarded, I replaced it with the latest Belkin ScreenForce UltraGlass2 Screen Protector. This is designed to be up to 2.7x stronger than tempered glass and yet is much thinner than many other models at just 0.29mm thick.

The handy thing about the Belkin Screen Protectors is that they come with a special tray to help apply the screen protector to your phone. You simply place your phone, screen down, into the tray on top of the screen protector and slowly pull the tab away from the phone. This removes the proactive cover while also wiping any dust off the screen. It’s a very clever little system.

Once the screen projector is on, it’s easy to forget it's there. Previous screen projectors I’ve used have been much bulkier and can sometimes suffer from reduced touch sensitivity at the edges. That’s certainly not the case here.

While I would certainly consider using my iPhone case-free in the future, I’ll always be sticking with a screen protector from now on. It will more than pay for itself with one slight slip of the hand.