 If you're into the automotive scene at all, you may have heard of these newfangled ceramic coatings, these seemingly magical paint protectants that are claimed by some to make it so that you never have to wash your car again and so that water beads right off. You'll also see these coatings advertised as having 9H hardness, which makes it sound like they would make whatever you apply them to a lot more scratch resistant. Now, my first assumption was that this has to be just snake oil, but what the, it's ridiculous. But after doing some research, there appears to be some truth to it. After this magic coating is applied and given time to cure, it creates a semi-permanent layer that is bonded to the top of the paint that fills in any pores making the surface very smooth. With the pores filled in, there's way less surface area for dirt and water to cling to and as a result, the dirt and the water just fall or bead off. Now it might not make it so you never have to wash your car again, but it will at least help it stay clean longer, which is all fine and good, but this is a tech channel, not a car channel. So we wanted to see if you can take this protectant, which is typically used for cars and use it to protect your smartphone from small scratches, fingerprints, and well, not water. It's still got holes in it where the water can get in, but at least those other things. And this video is brought to you guys by iFixit. The iFixit Mahi Driver Kit includes their quarter inch aluminum screwdriver handle with a magnetic bit socket, knurled grip and swivel top and 48 driver bits. Check it out at the link in the video description. We bought this kit online and theoretically, it has everything that we need to apply it ourselves. So on a car, what you would normally do is a complete paint correction to remove any dirt and contamination that was already present in the car's paint so that the coating would properly adhere and not lock any dirt underneath it. For us, that can basically be achieved by wiping down a phone with a microfiber cloth and some alcohol. Should get some alcohol. Where's the alcohol? Okay, that's better. Just so you guys know, we're using a Xiaomi Mi 8 just because we happened to have one lying around. It does not have an integrated screen protector, but it does use Corning Gorilla Glass 5. So this should be pretty representative of the type of glass that you've got on your device if you have something reasonably modern. Wow, it's a lot of stuff. So you've got a little microfiber cloth. You got more like a chamois type thing. So you apparently go like this and you clean your little, just clean up to your little cleaning thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, it's a phone. It's smooth already. It should be fine. I'm gonna put the gloves on, okay? Yep, I'm swimming in it. This is the applicator cloth. Oh, well, why am I using that to clean it? Dang it, Jake. All right, I will follow the instructions. Wow. How to apply. Optimal method, wash, clay bar, polish, IPA wipe. Simple method, wash, IPA wipe. Okay, well, we got that down. Before we put it on, I wanna talk about our methodology. My goal is to only destroy one phone in this process. So what I'm going to be doing is applying the ceramic coating to half of the screen and half of the back. Then I'm gonna leave it to cure for 24 hours and come back at it with, ah, yes, JerryRigEverything fans rejoice. We finally got one of these Mo's hardness test kits so that we too can talk about scratches at a level six with deeper grooves at a level seven. You guys know the drill. So basically the way Mo's scale of hardness works is the harder materials, so the ones with higher numbers should scratch the softer materials. So the ones with lower numbers and the softer ones should not scratch the harder ones. So they've got all these different picks in here and then they've actually got this handy dandy little scale that shows which materials my picks should be able to scratch and which ones they shouldn't. Diamond comes in at a hardness of 10. So that is the maximum according to Mo's hardness scale. And if the specs on this ceramic coating are to be believed, it would be nearly as tough as diamond. That would be very impressive given that Gorilla Glass 3 is estimated to be somewhere in the five and a half to six and a half range. I remember we got this test when I was in probably grade five or six and the first question on the exam was, read through the entire exam before you begin. And then it was just a normal exam. And then the last question was, good job. You read through the entire exam before you started. Do not fill out any of the other questions. Just turn it in blank. And it was like a test on following instructions. I did actually. Turns out I can do it. I just don't. Okay. Wipe a thin layer across the car surface. Dang it. I should have read the whole instructions before I started. You should have. Yeah. All right. Okay. Okay. Stuff stinks. I don't know how to get around the camera bump. Why did we accept this as consumers? Let the coating sit. Then remove the residue by lightly buffing with a microfiber towel. Yeah, I can definitely see the excess coming up. I wonder how this differs from the nano coating screen protector that we dragged behind my motorbike a number of years ago. That stuff worked really well though. I was very impressed. So maybe I'll be impressed tomorrow. Yeah, of course the sales materials are different from the manual. The longer it stays dry, the better as it will continue to cure. Allow at least 48 hours for initial drying and avoid water, rain or snow on the car. We don't recommend that you wash or expose the car to water for four to seven days afterwards. Like there's kind of a line there, but I also am trying not to buff over the line because I don't want to carry material onto the part that I want to use as my control. So, hard to tell. Okay. I knew this would come in handy for something someday. There. So I'm just putting that there so it doesn't accidentally touch anything while it's drying. Having waited the requisite day, I am now ready to tinker with this. So let's see if it behaves any differently on the regular glass versus the coated glass. Just want a few drops here. Da da da da da da da da da da da. More drops. Spread these drops out of it. Should be fine. Okay. So what I want to see is if there are any more beaded on the coated part versus on the non-coated part. Bear in mind, of course, guys, that most smartphones have oleophobic coatings on them already, so I'm not really expecting a difference here. Very interesting. So while they seem to be behaving similarly, when it actually comes time to pour it off, it does pour off more easily. Let's see if we make the same observation on the back. Now the back is quite curved, so. Again, very similar looking behavior. This is the coated side, but it's time to tip it. Oh, interesting. It actually came off less easily. Now I'm gonna use my greasy fingerprints to grease up the phone. I don't notice any appreciable difference in readability. Wait, is this thing dead? Oh, damn it. I can't say I notice any appreciable difference in image clarity with the screen on, but a lot of the time, what separates the good from the bad when it comes to screen coatings is how easy it is to wipe off grease. So we'll try to wipe that side. Take a clean part of the cloth, try to wipe that side. Wow, that's really similar. Okay, let's try my microfiber. I'll wipe a little bit harder this time. Okay, that came pretty clean. That also came pretty clean. I wouldn't say that there's a huge difference here. All right, let's try and create a bit more of a controlled test here then. So let's put four fingerprints, four fingerprints, okay. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm basically gonna go wipe. Okay, so a little bit remains. I'm gonna go wipe. Quite a lot remains. Wipe, it's gone. Interesting. I'd say it's about three wipes to six to eight on the non-coated side. Very cool. All right, let's pull something similar on the back here then. Four, five, oh boy. Six, seven. Doesn't seem to be helping that much here. Eight, nine, 10, nine, 10, 11, 12. I would say that is quite a similar result. Let's bring out the pics now then, shall we? Start with the back. I need a different kind of marker, but I can read it well enough that it's usable. No scratch whatsoever from the five pic. Here I'm expecting there's no way it's gonna hold up to this. Yep, paint scratches. Can you see them? Can you see them? Now you can see them? No, I can't, that's worse. Oh. Maybe? Should be three lines here. Can you see them? I don't see them. That's hard to see. Okay, well let's not worry about it then. And then pic seven scratches very easily. Okay. I mean, I don't know what, do we go for overkill at this point? Okay. Okay. Yeah, well, if seven scratches today, you obviously will. Now for the ceramic coated side. Four, five, six, seven. Here we go. So the reason I'm retesting four is that I wanna make sure that the ceramic coating itself won't show surface scratches or imperfections. And so far it doesn't. Six. This is where the ceramic coating could separate itself. Okay. Interesting. Time for number seven. And the behavior is basically identical. And seven. That seems better than seven on the other side. We're gonna turn this up to eight. Yep, that's definitely more noticeable, but it still is better behaved when it's being scratched, not splintering apart like the other side did. Time for ceramic coated. And that looks basically identical to the other one. And this is basically the same thing. Oh God, ow. I just got stabbed with the pick. It was the A-Pick. Well, I'm disappointed. I was basically expecting this stuff to turn my glass into like a diamond scratch barrier is what I would say if I wasn't aware that this 9H hardness is actually using a completely different scale from Moe's scale. So it's actually using the same hardness scale that pencils use. So this is a 9H pencil, which is somewhere in the range of around a three on Moe's scale. Now, what I did notice though, is that even though the ceramic coating isn't particularly hard, when I was using a three or four or even five pick, I didn't notice any weird residue building up where the coating was scratching off, leaving the exposed glass underneath it. So it seems to be just like a spectacularly thin coating on the glass. It's also definitely different from the liquid armor that I tested dragging behind my motorcycle all those years ago, because that, once you got under it, you could kind of scrape up and it created this kind of crusty layer over top. But this, I can't even get off, even if I wanted to try to scratch it off with my fingernail. There are a couple more things I wanted to evaluate. So I just wanted to make sure that touchscreen responsiveness is still fine with the ceramic coating. It doesn't surprise me to note that yes, in fact, it is indiscernible. And there is one more thing I wanted to try. Ow! Oh, I just stabbed myself with a pin removal tool. So I'm gonna take a couple of keys that are made of different materials. I'm just gonna kind of like try to scuff and scratch the bottom of the screen here. Materials, both of these keys seem soft enough. This is not making any difference at all. So then with no improvement to scratch resistance, the only selling point for a phone is the ever so slight improvement to liquid beading and repelling characteristics of, in our case, the front glass and the slight improvement that we noted in cleanability. Although, yeah, particularly that last one. I guess there's something to be said for that. Especially because it's not particularly expensive. This is like a many lifetime supply if all you're ever using it for is a phone. Speaking of things, you're using things for... If you use Wi-Fi most of the time on your smartphone, why are you paying for a fixed monthly data plan? Stop paying for what you don't use with Ting. You can find out how much you'll save with their calculator at linus.ting.com. We're gonna have that link below. Ting is a nationwide LTE carrier using both T-Mobile and Sprint networks, and they will never block, throttle, or interfere with your online access. 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