So far, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is proving to be a highly-popular device and deservedly so. Despite proving its mettle in drop tests that only cracked the back of the phone and being entirely reviews underwater, the phone’s tough cookie chops ended up being questioned by JerryRigEverything and his infamous torture test. A Moh’s hardness scale pick on level 3 was able to leave a visible mark on the phone. Strangely, no other picks up until the dreaded level 8 gave the phone any real trouble. Was the glass panel defective? Is the rough n’ tumble Galaxy Note 7 secretly not as durable as first thought? Did JerryRigEverything pick up the wrong pick? According to Corning, it’s none of the above.
In comments made to Android Authority, Corning, the maker of the Gorilla Glass 5 panel that graces the Galaxy Note 7’s front contest that the scratch test did not occur under completely controlled conditions, thus a huge number of different factors could have played a part in skewing things a bit. One factor that they zeroed in on, was that JerryRigEverything may have actually pushed hard enough on the pick to rub some of the material off onto the glass. Essentially, when a phone fails a scratch test, it leaves some material on the pick, which is how the scratch happens. Corning is suggesting that one possibility is that the opposite probably happened here; the Galaxy Note 7’s screen was so tough that sufficient force against it with a soft pick resulted in the pick giving up some material to the phone, instead of the other way around.
According to Corning, all glass falls somewhere around 5 or 6 on the Moh’s hardness scale, and the test conducted by JerryRigEverything was invalidated for the simple reason that it was not performed under perfectly controlled conditions. Since it was done by hand with Moh’s hardness picks, it could very well have been affected by changing load against the screen, environmental factors, or other issues. The Corning representative also said that they have reproduced just such a phenomenon in lab tests with Gorilla Glass 5 in the past. Essentially, Galaxy Note 7 buyers shouldn’t worry too much about their screens scratching or cracking under normal use, and the apparent “scratch” in the video using the pick with a hardness of 3 could be just the pick depositing material on the screen.