In case you missed it, Corning recently unveiled the most recent iteration of its increasingly popular line of smart phone glass – Gorilla Glass. Corning uses some pretty amazing techniques to alter its glass on the molecular level to give it the responsiveness strength, and durability that we have come to expect from high-end smart phones. Gorilla Glass 2 was just as scratch resistant as its predecessor, but was much thinner and therefore lighter. But Gorilla Glass 3 is actually three times as scratch resistance as its predecessor. Gorilla Glass 2 starts to scratch at 1.12/0.5kg of pressure., while this new version doesn’t start to take damage until 1.8lb/0.8kg, in case you were looking for specifics.
So what does this mean for you? It means that you can expect smart phones coming out near the end of 2013 to be much, much more durable than whatever is in your pocket right now. Besides the obvious blunt force trauma lots of tiny scratches from your keys or change in your pocket can add up over time. Besides damaging the responsiveness of your device, this will also weaken your screen. If you’ve ever dropped your phone and had the screen shatter into a million pieces this is often the cause. Many of us don’t want to make our phone bulky by adding a case to it, but screen protectors are cheap and often are well worth it. If you know that you tend to drop your phone, or if you keep it in your pocket with keys, loose change or anything metallic, make sure to grab yourself something to keep your screen safe asap.
Corning released two videos and we have included them for you below. The first shows you how Corning manufactures the glass that we find in most of our high-end smartphones, and the second demonstrates the durability of Gorilla Glass 3 compared to other types of glass.
It’s easy to take the glass on our modern devices for granted, but without Corning, the smart phone market would almost certainly be heavier, and much more fragile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xa53dLabuc