Gorilla Glass 4, Can Survive Drops 80% Of The Time

Corning, the company behind the tough Gorilla Glass, has announced a breakthrough with the toughest version of its protective screen to date, Gorilla Glass 4.

It says that the latest version of Gorilla Glass is up to two times tougher than any competitive cover glass available in the market.

While many screens are scratch proof the real problem with screens is their tendency to smash when dropped on hard or sharp objects. The boffins at Coring carried out a huge number of drop tests to simulate a phone dropping onto a rough road or similar surface, from a height of 1 meter. Examining the phones after each round of tests and modifying the screens accordingly helped them formulate a new cover design. According to Corning, this new cover glass can remain intact 80% of the time following a flat drop onto a rough surface from 1 meter.

While this isn’t the only way to break a screen it accounts for a high number of breakages and is one of the toughest scenarios to mitigate against.

Gorilla Glass 4 is the same thickness as Gorilla Glass 3, at 0.4 millimeter and has the same scratch resistant properties but the added toughness will mean that if your next device features Gorilla Glass 4, it’s far more likely to survive a face plant.

Competing materials such as soda-lime screens break almost 100% of the time in similar tests, and while sapphire glass may be highly scratch resistant according to Corning exec Cliff Hund “over time microscopic abrasions build up and makes it more brittle and likely to shatter in a fall” additionally Hund said that “aluminosilicate glass ( such as Gorilla Glass ) has better optical properties” not to mention it’s cheaper and more energy efficient to produce.

Gorilla Glass is the cover glass of choice for android phones but features frequently in rugged phones and is used by over 40 manufacturers in 1395 products worldwide and since 2007 when it was launched, Gorilla Glass has featured in over 3 billion devices.

Follow this link to read more about Rugged phones