Looking at the Samsung Galaxy Alpha list of specifications, it appears that Samsung made a number of compromises in order to get the chassis so small and light; it’s under 7mm thin. The handset comes with mid-range numbers on the box, these being a new generation, octa-core Samsung Exynos processor built on a new, smaller manufacturing process to reduce power consumption and improve battery life. This processor combine a high performance quad-core processor for the heavy lifting with a high efficiency, lower performance quad-core unit designed to sip battery when in use: it’s not as powerful as some of the alternatives available in the marketplace but it performs well. The processor is backed up by 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage, with no MicroSD card. The Alpha has a 4.7-inch, 720p resolution Super AMOLED screen, a rear-facing 12 MP camera and a 1,860 mAh battery. When we tested the Galaxy Alpha here at Android Headlines, the only compromise we found in day to day usability was the battery life, which was constrained by the relatively small capacity battery. In every other respect, the Galaxy Alpha’s mid-range specifications manage to reach the point whereby they’re good enough.
Now, Corning have announced that they collaborated with Samsung to provide the Galaxy Alpha with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, the most damage resistant version of Gorilla Glass yet. We already knew that the Galaxy Note 4 carrier Gorilla Glass 4 and had speculated that the Alpha had the newer generation glass, too. In the case of the Galaxy Alpha, the front glass is just 0.4mm thick. Gorilla Glass 4, in Corning’s words, “dramatically improves protection against cover glass damage during device drops.” We already know that Gorilla Glass is resistant to the everyday scratches that devices can pick up through use, plus of course the drop-damage resistance. Corning employ reliability experts to assess hundreds of damaged devices to assess how and why the glass breaks, before their scientists develop simulations in order to test these conditions and their engineers design a material to beat the test. Corning’s website also details how the business spends a great deal of time with Samsung to recommend solutions to improve the device by making it thinner and stronger.
Gorilla Glass was launched in 2007 and has been used by 40 manufacturers across almost 1,400 product lines. Corning say that the use of Gorilla Glass has been used as a key selling feature and it’s been used in over 3 billion devices, but I have to concede that it has never been a primary consideration for myself: when I’ve been looking at devices, it’s not even been a consideration but I am also fortunate enough to have never broken a device screen. What do our users think? Do you purposefully seek out a device using Gorilla Glass, or a competitor product, over one that does not mention it in the specification list? Let us know in the comments below.