For those of you who currently own a BlackBerry Z10, there’s an interesting engineering decision that you should know about. Every touchscreen device has something called a digitizer, which is the part of a touchscreen that senses your touch and “digitizes” your gestures into impulses that the phone can understand as commands. With the BlackBerry Z10, this digitizer is fused right to the glass, meaning if you break the screen, you break the digitizer and the device instantly becomes a paperweight.
On most smartphones, the digitizer and screen are separate. This allows you to repair a cracked screen without having to replace the digitizer, which lowers the cost of repair.
So if you’re a Z10 owner, or planning on buying one, do yourself a favor and get a case. By saving the device from a cracked screen, you’re also saving yourself from having to replace the digitizer as well. You’ll also save yourself from not having a working phone until the screen is replaced, since the fused digitizer will brick the phone when the screen is cracked.
Photo and post idea credit to CB Forum member CatlinFD.