Finally, get full protection for your smartphone’s screen

Sites include evolutivelabs.com . Published on February 20th, 2013. Written by Loic Cobbina.

Every year people accidentally drop their phone only to realized that the screen is broken after picking it up. Replacing a phone screen is relatively expensive so one would prefer to avoid such a situation. There is some good news though. A brand new screen protector is on the way. It is called the Rhino Shield, it is designed by the UK-based Evolutive Labs and it is impact resistant. Its designer believes it can withstand almost all kinds of damage.

The shield is just about 3 times the width of a standard paper sheet. It is made of 6 layers of polymer each having a thickness of 0.01 inches. When a phone or tablet is dropped, the innermost layers works together with the outermost layer to absorb the shock. The inner part of the shield is made of what is called “impact dumping” layers and “dispersion layers”.

The man behind this project is called Eric Wang. He created the Evolutive Labs and designed the Rhino Shield. Wang is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge. He studied material science and engineering. He said the decision to create the shield came after several of his friends had their phone and tablet screens shattered.

In an interview with Mashable, Wang mentioned that he was the only nerdy student his friends knew. So they would always come to him asking if he could come up with anything that would help them prevent the shattering of the glass. Because that was his field of study, the Cambridge student decided to tackle the case.

To explain how the shield works Wang said it is a basic physics equation. Pressure is equal to force divided by area. Based on the interaction between the dumping and dispersion layers of the shield the amount of force per area can be reduced. As a direct consequence the altitude of the force on the glass is also reduced.
There are already other protective screens for sale in the market. The Gorilla Glass is one of them. The Rhino Shield seems to be doing better according to the video that was shared by Wang on his Kickstarter video. Two iPhones are seen on the video, one with the standard Gorilla Glass 2 and the other one with the Rhino Shield. After dropping half a pound of a ball on each of them you can clearly see that the screen of iPhone with the Gorilla Glass is shattered. The iPhone screen with the Rhino shield remains intact.

In comparison with with Gorilla Glass the ball was dropped at a height of 3.5 inches for the screen to break but in the case of the Rhino Shield the ball was dropped at a height of 18 inches, yet the phone was able to withstand the shock.

the shield can be used to protect a variety of electronic products like the iPhone, the Nexus, the Galaxy Note 10.1 and iPads. Wangs says the product is going to be manufactured in large sheets so that it can be cut and customized according to the size of the object it is designed for.

Wang is still raising funds for the project and they have now reached $23 000 out of the $77 000 goal. There are still 22 days left to donate. The nerdy students said that hopefully the distribution can begin as early as April, that is if the funding goal is met. The cost of an item will range from $18 to $30