Gorilla Glass – a hardened glass found in modern iPhone and Samsung devices – has unveiled its latest version which they believe might help make smashed screens a thing of the past.
Corning, the company behind the Gorilla Glass brand, has announced that Gorilla Glass 6 should be two times as likely to survive being dropped vs Gorilla Glass 5.
This is good news for modern smart-phone users. Recent larger phones have used glass on their backs as well as the front.
This means that glass backed smartphones can have new features and applications for consumers; enhanced wireless charging, larger screen sizes with smaller bezels, and customization through printed glass backs. However, it also means that a phone is almost certainly going to have glass come in contact with the ground when it is dropped.
The company has used a new chemically strengthened and highly compressed glass for the latest version. Dr Jaymin Amin, vice president of technology and product development at Corning explains that “with breaks during drops being a probabilistic event, the added compression helps increase, on average, the likelihood of survival through multiple drop events”.
The company tested their glass by dropping it from 1m onto a rough surface in their lab. The new glass survived an average of 15 drops combelieveso Gorilla Glass 5 which only survived 11.
The glass is currently using in both market leaders – the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy – as well as most other top-tier UK smartphones. Corning believe their glass has been used by 6 billion devices by more than 45 major brands since they introduced Gorilla Glass 1.
This new generation of glass should hit the market in the next few months which means it will almost certainly be found when new smartphones hit the market at the end of the year.
