Slashdot Mirror
Corning Reveals Gorilla Glass 4, Promises No More Broken IPhones
An anonymous reader writes "Corning introduced next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is ten times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market. The company says that the Gorilla Glass 4 so launched is to address the No.1 problem among the smartphones users- screen breakage due to everyday drops."
.. but what about Android Phones
Now I can upgrade to the next iPhone.
Then when they announce Gorilla Glass x+1 I can upgrade to the next iPhone!
and Repeat...
The article says "two times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market". The post reads "ten".
First article says:
Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced its next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is two times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.
Second article says:
Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is ten times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.
Or was it Perkin-Elmer?
As in the Hubble Space Telescope mirror that had a spherical aberration?
How am I supposed to be different if my phone's screen looks like everyone else's?
www.gaiageek.com
Who competes with Corning? Seriously, my 200$ Chinese android phone has gorilla glass. I have yet to see a modern smartphone not have gorilla glass.
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Please tell us how they achieved this feat or materials engineering.
I'm only half-kidding. over the past year or two, there's been a nifty cottage industry of small storefronts that perform screen replacements on cell phones. If that number gets cut in half, things are going to get interesting for these store owners. Also, if the phones are not only more shatter resistant but scratch resistant as well, I wonder if it would (forgive the pun) make a dent in sales of Otterbox and other impact resistant cases. Not only would this impact Otter Products, but also many retailers, since cases tend to be a high-margin upsell, so their profits would slip.
Similarly, I wonder if the new glass will be reflected in Asurion premiums. If they're replacing statistically half the phones (I'll believe the "2x" number rather than the "10x" number for the sake of this post), shouldn't the premiums reflect this as the company is taking a lower risk? I know the general thinking is "zomg moar hookerz for the see-ee-ohes!!!111", but I generally don't know if there's some legislative edict that requires insurance premiums to reflect the risk being taken.
You are missing one point. Money does not disappear. When I save few bucks on screen replacement, I can spend them buying a book, going on a dinner... Or in other way: Think of all those arrow fletchers! What will they do when you replace the good old bow and arrow with a fire gun? :-)
So now finally they've come out with glass for smartphones that DOESN'T break? What have they been selling before this?
my dad was carrying his phone with something a folder. The phone slipped and fell four feet onto concrete. The Samsung Galaxy has a big spider crack. Normally he puts his phone in his pocket. Not sure why he tried to carry it between his hand and folder.
Great news on the glass, all for it. But it's still too difficult to repair and replace the glass (and batteries) on these phones due to the adhesive.
Gently reply
From the PCMag article: "The company said it survives drops up to 80 percent of the time." That's from a three foot drop. Corning does not promise no more broken iPhone screens as the headline reads. Slashdot, please stop with the click bait headlines. Present facts, please.
the OEMs will use GG4's extra strength to make their phones 0.2mm thinner instead, because thin is more important than strength or battery life.
From the Corning site:
They used this knowledge to develop new drop-test methods that simulate real-world break events, dropping devices face-down from one meter in height, so that the glass came in direct contact with a rough surface.
That's all well and good, but almost every time I've seen a screen broken, it's been where the phone landed on one of its corners. Face-down drops spread the energy out over most of the screen, but corner drops concentrate it all into one place on the glass when the phone's bezel deforms, much more so with the ultra-thin bezels that are all the rage now.
So the bosses of Slashdot accept yet another big check from a PR agency. Even more LAUGHABLE when you consider Apple gambled billions on SAPPHIRE glass being the wonder tech of the future, grabbing an exclusive supply by bullying and exploiting the biggest sapphire manufacturer, only to drop the idea like a hot potato when sapphire proved to be as useless as every material scientist already knew it would.
So now Slashdot helps rewrite history, Orwellian fashion, and pretend none of this ever happened, while taking a massive cheque to help inflate Corning's stock.
Not that we don't have a vague interest in the incremental improvements of ordinary glass production that gives phones and tablets better protection year-on-year. But phones have a raft of such technologies that each need to achieve wonders to allow robust computer functions in such a compact format.
-battery
-screen
-screen touch function
-screen lighting (back or 'front')
-case
Astonishingly, the LEAST remarkable part of such devices tends to be the electronics. By which I mean the semiconductor technologies all pretty much travel down familiar roads. It is those listed above that allow the possibility of extraordinary breakthroughs driven by necessity of ever thinner, ever lighter, ever stronger devices.
In many ways, it is as if the tech of mobile devices has become a series of Olympic events- breaking records for thinness, lightness, battery life etc- even when the majority of customers would accept a format more traditional and cost effective at the cost of a few extra grams or tens of millimetres.
Complicating things is that high-value brands, like Apple, expect their devices to have a short life of high functionality. If they catastrophically fail a couple of years down the road, this is good for Apple's repeat sales. So Apple can focus on highly sophisticated and expensive designs with LOW lifetime (hence the amount of glue found in the latest Apple devices).
from the PC Mag article:
"They found that Gorilla Glass 4 is up to two times tougher than competitive glass. The company said it survives drops up to 80 percent of the time."
Flip phone.
Have gnu, will travel.
I really doubt they promise "no more broken iPhones" when the video admits they only prevent 80% of breaks. That still leaves 1 in 5 broken.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It works for my glasses well enough.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That was NASA's mistake. The mirror was made to spec, but NASA didn't work out how it would deform in orbit/a microgravity environment.
That's an interesting claim, but entirely fictional, as far as I can tell. I followed the story closely at the time, and in the end, every report I saw put the blame on a defective Perkin-Elmer null corrector assembly (reserving some blame for NASA's inadequate oversight of their development and testing processes).
Why are you trying to rewrite history?
The real problem is that it is difficult to replace the glass It it was simple to replace the relative low cost of replacement would mean the occasional breakage wouldn't be a significant problem.
It's so far past "about time" they need to change their product name. Everyone knows gorilla glass means cheap crap that shatters on impact.
Oh good! Now they make the glass much thinner so it will break just as often or more! Imagine they could make the next iPhone a whole millimeter thinner if they did that and made the case out of paper! That a genius idea, I should apply for a managerial position at Apple!
I have an old T-mobile Galaxy II (989) that supposedly has gorilla glass on the screen. I've dropped it numerous times and it's never once broken or shattered, and it's now an ancient phone by internet standards. Yet I've seen countless iphones with broken glass. Perhaps the more flimsy, plasticy Android phones actually have an advantage here by flexing instead of shattering? Or is there some other reason this is an Apple problem?
Can't wait for transparisteel... (In all seriousness, why aren't phones using Aluminium oxynitride instead of Sapphire glass or Gorilla Glass?)
It's because idiotic girls carry them in their BACK pockets and SIT ON THEM.
Anything past the 4 series isn't too bad to repair.
The collapse of a competitive advantage crystal lens product in GT Advanced which was summarily driven into the ground, bankrupted and which failure narily caused a single Apple iPhone shipment delay.
Any problems connecting dots, seeing the landscape and strategy now?
I dropped my Galaxy S5 out of my hand when walking and it completely smashed the glass. I am shocked how fragile the new phone was compared to my older Nexus S. I am on the hook for a $250+ bill to get it repaired.
I have no clue how you can engineer a mobile phone which can't withstand a drop from that distance. I will never buy another Samsung product again.
now plaster the stuff all over the front of desktop monitors and lcd televisions so we have a durable easy to clean surface that won't scratch or break when you take the wii's interactivity a little too far.
"The company said that Gorilla Glass 4 survives drops up to 80 percent of the time"
I've learned that "up to" is weaselspeak.
Translation:
"In tests, devices were dropped 5 times. NONE of them survived the 5th drop. Testing continued until by sheer luck, one device survived the 4th drop."
Your phone is a sample size of one, compared to countless iPhones. It would be more meaningful to compare the average breakage rate of all Galaxy S2s sold vs its contemporary iPhone model's breakage rate.
It's a design flaw with the iPhone. The slim bezel and aluminium case transfer any external impact directly to the glass screen, whereas any other phone with a plastic case can withstand the knocks better. I've had a few Samsung and HTC handsets and drop them all the time and never cracked a screen. Plastic might not sound as cool on the marketing material, but it sure as hell is the most appropriate material for this environment. And since most iPhone users by a plastic case for them anyway, the aluminium thing is pure gimmick.
Umm no. I meant that besides my own phone I've seen countless android phones of different kinds (mostly Samsung) and not one with a shattered screen. I've seen many shattered iPhones though.