Guide: Remove the Screen Protector for improved clarity, brightness and color palette

Dear all, thank you for reading this. I have re-written this entire first post, to provide proof and better information.

When I discovered a light scratch on my Sony Tablet S, I was particularly disappointed, because I had been taking good care of it, and I couldn't think of a reason it should have gotten a scratch in the first place. It looked irregular, as if a key like object had grinded the surface. Needless to say, a product is not supposed to get scratches so easily!

I proceeded to the 'teeth tap' trick on my device. This is basically to verify if it has a glass or a plastic coating. If you lightly tap the device's screen against your teeth, you can tell if the sensation is similar to a glass or plastic. Tablet S feels very much like plastic, which was yet another disappointment, as it means more scratches.

Then I did some research, inspired by the S-E Xperia Play, which also led many to believe that it came with a plastic screen, when that was not the case.

Turns out, S-E (and Sony?) have been releasing their recent line of phones with pre-installed screen protectors. These are not really meant to 'protect' the screen (although they do), and are more required to avoid the screen shattering into pieces (due to the quality of the glass, which is not as good as other equivalent devices'). This post explains it a little bit better.

Many users have opted to remove them (and either keep the glass screen naked, or install a 3rd party screen protector of their own choice) and have reported the following pros and cons:

CONS:
- Residue is likely to be left behind, requiring careful cleaning
- Screens can crack / break into pieces quite easily. Some even on first drop.
- Some prefer the 'anti-glare' function of the pre-installed screen protector.

PROS:
- Touch response is improved (see bartbla's post)
- Improved clarity
- Improved brightness
- Glass is hard to scratch -- unlike the pre-installed screen protector which does get scratched easily
- Glass does not attract dust, hair, oils or fingerprints as easily as the installed protective film
- You can install a 3rd party protector of your own choosing

You can check these two posts for more information and screens of what it all looks like: (POST1, POST2)

I then thought: Maybe the Tablet S also has the same 'design'. And it does.

I can confirm that I have removed my installed screen protector. This was definitely NOT an easy thing to do. At times you feel like you are 'ruining' some kind of coating that is meant to stay on. But the brave get going when the going gets tough... so I persevered! And luckily for me, I was right. It is just a screen-protector which serves no apparent function (since you can replace it with one of your own that does a better job).

The things I can confirm are the following:

Brightness is increased
Clarity is marginally improved
Color palette is slightly improved (due to the above two mostly)
The device seems to respond to my taps more accurately

I cannot find negatives, apart from the fact that the glass screen underneath is definitely not oleophobic. It gets smudged just as much as the protector. But at least it is glass, so stains go away easier (with fewer wipes) and of course, the feel is 'better' and it does not scratch easily. I still, however, encourage people to put a screen protector on, as there is reason to suspect that this is a normal glass (not an enhanced glass or a gorilla glass), thus it may scratch easier and also crack easier.

I am now including some pictures of the process, and also a 'before' after comparison for you.

First, how the tablet should look normally. Notice at the edge a very small gap. This indicates where the screen protector is:


Next, this is after a bit of it has been peeled. This is a long and arduous process. Took me about 5 minutes just to get it to this state!


About 5 minutes later of carefully breaking my nails trying to remove a little bit more:


Finally, after a good portion of it was removed (it seems glued to the device!!!) you can carefully use a tongues tool or equivalent to grab the edge and finally start peeling it off. It seems that it is only glued at the edges, as it starts coming off much easier after a while:


After you have removed it, the screen may be 'sticky'. This is to be expected. You can use a mild alcohol solution with a little bit of water, and carefully clean any residue. Soon enough you will have a perfect glass screen!

For your convenience, here are my results, before and after, up close:


This picture was taken at exact same brightness. In fact, it was while still removing it. You can see it is brighter and clearer on the side I have removed.

So, there you have it! I hope this has been useful to some of you! If it has been, I would appreciate if you clicked the 'Thanks!' button!

Some extra notes:

bartbla tried this and has reported that the protective film can be removed to improve clarity, touch sensitivity, display angles -- and of course no more scratches!

Thanks to Zardif, we now have a visual confirmation of the differences -- although the quality of the picture is not that good and might be hard to tell them apart just by looking at it. So I took the liberty to edit the picture, keeping the leftmost (film protector removed) and the rightmost (film protect still on). Hope you can tell the differences!

PS: Although this topic is unimportant compared to the truly important works by other posters, if it has helped you in any kind of way I would appreciate if you clicked the thanks button. It's just a nice way to be... nice.

I can already confirm for you that it has a factory applied screen protector. We removed the one from my friends tablet about a month ago.

We both had the Sony matte screen protector on our tablets and a while back he managed to drop his tablet screen first onto the corner of a cinderblock. That incident put a hole straight through the matte screen protector and chipped what we thought was the screen underneath. About a month ago while inspecting my own tablet I noticed what appeared to be a second screen protector under the one I had applied and so we tried removing it on his tablet. Wonderfully enough we got it off and his screen was perfectly intact underneath. The actual tablet screen is quite wonderful in terms of dealing with fingerprints. It picks up virtually no fingerprints at all while swiping your fingers, but will pick up fingerprints if you just jab a finger at the screen. The brightness levels are no different than with the factory applied protector, if you were wondering. We tried testing to see if there was any noticable difference in touch sensitivity, but we couldn't notice any major difference.

I took mine off.
Just like on my SE Arc I think the screen looks a little bit better without the factory installed screen-protector.
The viewing angle is also a bit better and the touch responsiveness is better, I noticed the difference with fruit ninja, I have to touch the screen with less force to get a reaction.
The plastic screen-protector also attracts more dust and (in my case) cat hairs.
All in all I like the touch off the glass surface better then the plastic surface.

Removing the factory installed screen-protector took me some time, the first time I could only damage the protector when I started in a corner, I could not get it off and thought this was a layer witch was not to be removed (maybe a sort of color adjustment coating).
But after reading that someone else removed it, I tried again and this time it worked.

My wife didn't have the patience to wait for an answer on the stylus question, so she removed it to find out for herself. Here's what we found out:

1.) The needle trick.. brilliant! The whole process took a couple of minutes. Use the needle to slowly peel back the plastic. Start at the corner (obviously).

2.) That screen protector is VERY thick and strong. No wonder the stylus input wasn't being picked up properly.

3.) Screen: MUCH BETTER. There is no question. Shouldn't even be up for debate. Right before we took this off, we were looking at photos. More clear, brighter.

4.) Touch input: Dramatically better. I have two stylus (styli?), a cheapo and an expensive one, both work great on it now. Even light strokes with the pen register now. If you need to apply a ton of pressure to draw straight lines, then you need to remove the plastic. Try with Draw Something and SBMX. So. Much. Better.

I'm sure there was a reason Sony put this piece of plastic on, but I feel I'm finally using the tablet to its potential. Pro far outweighs con.

Maybe I was lucky, mine came off within 20 seconds!

Didn't seem to be stuck down much, no sticky residue left behind!