I ride the train to work every day…two hours each way, which gives me a lot of time to mess around (I mean work) on my HTC Hero.  The only problem is that the train seats two people on a pretty tight bench, meaning there is pretty much always someone squeezing elbows with me.  Unless one of my friends are on the train, that leaves me pressed up against a stranger, a situation which is ripe for uninvited viewing.  So, what I need is a way to retain my privacy while in a small, cramped space, pressed up against a stranger.  Which leads us to the ScreenGuardz Privacy Film, which the folks at screenGuardz were kind enough to send over for me to check out.

Right off the bat, you can see where this is different from most other screen protectors (that is a standard screen protector on the left).  First of all, this is a very stiff, thick piece of plastic.  I was a little surprised by this, as I am used to the typical screen protector, which is almost an impossibly thin (and flimsy) plastic.  One of the nice things about this thickness is that you can just drop the Privacy Film on the screen of your device.  There is no real need to mess around with smoothing out the bubbles or making it sit just right on the screen.  That being said, you will still want to clean your screen with a microfiber cloth in order to make sure that no dust or dirt gets trapped under the Privacy Film.  For this reason, I was pretty surprised that, unlike most screen protectors, there was no cloth included in this package.

While this thickness makes it extremely easy to place the ScreenGuardz Privacy Film on your device (an area which is a perennial problem for me with other screen protectors), I was concerned that same thickness would interfere with the touch screen.  After some significant testing, however, I was pretty impressed by the responsiveness of the screen, even with the ScreenGuardz in place.  I will not say that it had no impact on the screen responsiveness at all, there was a little loss of sensitivity.  However, any loss of responsiveness was not significant enough to really hinder my ability to use my device.

The other thing you are going to notice straight out of the package is the polarization of the film.  It is really pretty dark, and I will say that it did interfere a little with my ability to see the screen, but not significantly.

Now, here is the real kicker.  What happens when you add the thickness and polarization together on top of your screen?  Well, if everything works as advertised, then you should get a pretty nice privacy screen for your device.   I found this really worked out pretty well.   As soon as you start getting off center from the device, that privacy screen really starts to kick in.  At a slight angle, you will start to notice some blurring on the screen, making it difficult to read over your shoulder.  As you can see in the photos above. at a steeper angle, the screen appears to go completely blank (on the right is a picture of the same screen without the Privacy Film).   The best part is that this is a four way privacy screen, so no matter which direction someone is sitting, they will be blocked from reading the contents of your screen.  Below is one more comparison shot from a different angle (again the “naked” screen is on the right, the Privacy Film is on the left).

I was pretty impressed by the ScreenGuardz Privacy Film.  If you do important work on your device (or unimportant personal tasks) in public places, then you are going to want to check these out for your device.  Despite the fact that I did notice some slight interference with my screen when compared with a standard screen protector, that was pretty minimal and well worth that cost in exchange for the extra privacy offered by the ScreenGuardz.

The ScreenGuardz Privacy Filters are available from ScreenGuardz for $19.95.