I put a privacy screen on my Galaxy S25 Ultra and regretted it

With so much personal data on smartphones, privacy screen protectors are increasingly popular. Earlier this year I installed an ESR privacy protector on my Galaxy S25 Ultra. Installation used a guide tray for near-perfect placement; the tempered glass sat centered and a few air bubbles were easily scrubbed off.

At first the two-way privacy filter worked exactly as intended. Viewed head-on the display remained bright and vibrant; a slight shift left or right made the image fade to black, which made me comfortable answering emails and messages on the New York City subway.

Problems emerged when the display dimmed itself while I was watching Lakers highlights. My phone’s adaptive brightness plunged the image more dramatically than expected because the protector’s tinting made the device perceive the environment as darker. After a day of testing I turned off adaptive brightness; with the protector installed the S25 Ultra adaptively set brightness to less than 50% when placed in front of a window.

United States, New York City

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