Fake Cracked Screen Protector

Being a resident of a crime-ridden hell-hole where laws are neither followed nor enforced I had my cell phone taken on a night out. Being only a month or so old, this phone was likely a prime target for the members of society involved in independent tax-efficient electronics trading. My phone was not in a case, but most are. Meaning, the only visible indicators of condition/value are the screen and possibly the various camera protrusions from the back.

If you're in the public harvesting of momentarily abandoned valuables business, you only have a second or so to glance at an object before sliding it off a table into a bag. So a phone in a cheap case with a cracked screen? The risk*/reward calculation doesn't look so good. The problem? My phone didn't have a cracked screen, it's replacement will also hopefully not have a cracked screen. So, well, I could take my new phone and hammer it face-first on the edge of my kitchen counter, but with ever-improving Gorilla glass this is a gamble. I could go too far and take a chunk of granite off my counter.

So, DIY-applied plastic film screen protectors are a thing. They to an extent already, phone specific. My idea is that the screen protectors not only act as a barrier to the glass but also have a convincing representation of a cracked screen. This should be a great theft deterrent as phones with cracked screens don't have much retail value and screen repair is somewhere between difficult and impossible. The cracks will also be phone specific. We don't want the cracks running right through the front camera or fingerprint sensor, and we don't want to much in the way of critical parts of the screen. Maybe keep most of it in the bottom left corner with a single large & noticeable diagonal crack. Maybe a multipack so you can have a different crack every week**

The point is, before setting off for a vacation to a location where your phone is worth 3 months salary or where the cornerstones of civilization are crumbling, apply a fake cracked screen and hopefully avoid the hassle of getting a new phone/sim remembering all the log in details of 129 apps.

*Ha!

**Maybe you're trying to convince a relative that you have pathological clumsiness.