Corning Gorilla Glass 4 focuses on drop protection

[Shawn Knight]

The fight against gravity is one that your smartphone is never going to win but companies like Corning strive to minimize the damage. Their Gorilla Glass brand of hardened glass is used by nearly every major electronics manufacturer as a deterrent against scratched screens.

With the company’s fourth generation glass, however, the focus has shifted from scratch resistance to impact protection. Specifically, Gorilla Glass 4 was designed to stand up better against drops onto hard surfaces like concrete better than before.

During its development, Corning scientists used 180-grit sandpaper to simulate falls onto hard surfaces. In testing Gorilla Glass 4 against the competition, Corning’s solution survived impacts up to 80 percent of the time. What’s more, the fourth generation glass showed up to two times improvement over Gorilla Glass 3 when dropped from a height of one meter.

Corning East Asia president Cliff Hund said they haven’t wiped out the possibility of breaks but they’ve taken a real chunk out of it. The executive admitted that sapphire is still top of the line in terms of visible scratch resistance but as the sour deal between Apple and supplier GT Advanced Technologies has shown, producing it in quantities to cover millions of phones is no easy task.

Corning also said there were no compromises that had to be made with Gorilla Glass 4 to improve its strength; it retains the same optical clarity as before.

Gorilla Glass 4 is already shipping to manufacturing partners and is expected to show up in handsets within this quarter.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/58901-corning-gorilla-glass-4-focuses-drop-protection.html

 

[stewi0001]

With the mess that happened with Apple and GTAT, maybe Corning could buy out GTAT.

 

[Lurker101]

Somebody should let them know that phones very rarely land precisely face down. Most of the time it's on the edge or a corner.

 

[Nima304]

About time they started focusing on this.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Stop being so hard assed and just put your phone in a functional, not decorative protective pouch, if you drop it the chances are excellent it will survive without a scratch... OK so you might break the PCB in half and scramble the internals a bit but externally the phone will still look great and that's important, right?

 

[m4a4]

Hehe, "a$$phalt"

Otherwise, I'd like to see their testing for edge drops, as it is usually worse than face drops...

 

[gamoniac]

Very cool, but why the sandpaper simulation? Why not go to a nearby hardware store and buy a tile or paver tile for $2? They can't get any more real. That is where I dropped mine, on the kitchen tile

 

[lipe123]

What they should instead be doing is making the screens from a rubbery soft substance instead of going harder and harder until a few years from now it will be adamantium laced diamond screens that can survive a 50 cal round at <6 ft

 

[Greg S]

What they should instead be doing is making the screens from a rubbery soft substance instead of going harder and harder until a few years from now it will be adamantium laced diamond screens that can survive a 50 cal round at <6 ft

Samsung and LG have been working on flexible display tech. Flexible displays are required before flexible coverings, else the screen would still be obliterated upon impact.

 

[Guest]

Why would they buy out a Bankrupt company -_-

 

[Guest]

"What they should instead be doing is making the screens from a rubbery soft substance instead of going harder and harder until a few years from now it will be adamantium laced diamond screens that can survive a 50 cal round at <6 ft"

Adamantium laced screen to survive .50 cal round? no need adamantium, even now with our technology we could make transparent armor (glass) that can survive .50 cal, it called transparent aluminium.. or aluminum oxynitride, now it's extensively used (or incorporated) in many products especially for military purposes and or armor applications

 

[Guest]

It seems like the failures at GTAT were largely due to chronic mismanagement and not due to technical limitations. Corning manages large projects like this very capably - I think they should buy GTAT in order to stay ahead here. If they don't, one of their competitors will.

 

[Jad Chaar]

Kind of bummed that Apple's sapphire endeavors went wrong since we really need better shatter protection. On the other hand, it is good to see Corning stepping up.

 

[Guest]

They should use the glass that they use for Pyrex bowls. Those things can survive a nuclear bomb.

 

[Mikymjr]

What they should instead be doing is making the screens from a rubbery soft substance instead of going harder and harder until a few years from now it will be adamantium laced diamond screens that can survive a 50 cal round at <6 ft

think about how you can make your own vest, just by buying a few of those. Will make an excellent setup for paint-balling also =p