amFilm OneTouch Privacy for Galaxy S24 Ultra review: Ill-tempered

Screen protectors are a staple in the phone world. When we spend so much money on phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, it’s natural that we want to protect that investment. Usually, you can’t go wrong with screen protectors. Sure, some are better than others, but you’ll rarely find one that’s outright bad. As uncommon as they are, they’re still out there.

The S24 Ultra is one of our favorite phones, and its display is a big reason. A product that could interfere with screen quality deserves some scrutiny.

Price and availability

This screen protector offers a lot of value. For $12, you get two screen protectors and two camera lens protectors, although I didn’t install these as they interfere with many cases. OneTouch Privacy is available from Amazon.

What’s good about the amFilm OneTouch Privacy?

Easy dust removal

Installing the OneTouch Privacy is simple enough. The rig and instructions provided are easy to follow, although not without issue, as we’ll discuss later. My favorite part of the installation is the inclusion of dust removal stickers as large as the phone itself.

Removing dust was much easier using these than the small stickers usually included in protectors like this. It also handles reflections better than most, although it isn’t quite as good as Samsung’s official protector.

Privacy-focussed screen protectors like this make the screen appear black when viewed off-angle, making it harder for people to snoop on what you’re doing. The OneTouch Privacy does this well, with the screen magically fading to black as you tilt it. Unfortunately, that’s where the good points end.

What’s bad about the amFilm OneTouch Privacy?

Rather a lot, sadly

It’s hard to show on camera, but there is a visible grid pattern to everything on the screen when this is applied. I won’t go down the rabbit hole of these protectors’ work, but the way they filter light so it can only be viewed from certain angles ruins display quality.

Because these grooves sit atop the display within the protector, you get a strange parallax effect as you move the phone slightly. Within a few moments of use, I had an awful migraine start to form. I installed both of these protectors, carefully following the instructions each time, and both ended up misaligned in the same way. Brightness suffers, too. The S24 Ultra has a ridiculously bright display, but I could hardly see it when I was outside.

A small circle in the protector doesn’t have the privacy coating. This is meant to cover the selfie camera, but as you can see, it didn’t line up correctly. Plus, a tiny sliver of the screen was visible on the whole left side of my phone. The box of the Privacy Screen advertises compatibility with the Ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, and while it wasn’t bad, it was nowhere near as accurate as usual.

Should you buy the amFilm OneTouch Privacy?

It’s not often that I’ll be so direct, but I have to be in this case; this is not something I would recommend buying. You should not buy a screen protector that doesn’t line up correctly, makes your display look like that of an original iPhone, makes the screen look dim, and gives you a migraine.

I wouldn’t let yourself be put off of amFilm’s other products, though. These flaws I mention apply to most privacy screen protectors. I’ve used conventional protectors from amFilm on older phones, and they were just fine.