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Apple's Use Of 'Sapphire' in iPhone Camera Lens Questioned in New Tests (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has been using sapphire on its iPhone camera lenses for a few years now since the launch of the iPhone 5S, but it might not be as scratch resistant as you'd expect. A new video raises questions over Apple's use of sapphire in its iPhone camera lens, and includes scratch tests to rate its durability. While Apple claims it uses sapphire crystal in its iPhone lens, tests by YouTuber JerryRigEverything show that Apple could be using a more cost effective sapphire laminate on top of regular glass. JerryRigEverything tested Apple's iPhone lens with an XRF machine and electron microscope, and concluded that Apple doesn't use pure sapphire in its lenses. The underside of the lens contains less sapphire than the exposed part, and a scratching comparison with a Tissot sapphire watch showed that the lens cover will scratch at a level 6 on Mohs Scale of Hardness, compared to level 8 for the Tissot watch.
No no no no, people are totally misunderstanding what Apple means when they say their stuff is made "with sapphires," not "out of sapphires." Like when I say "I made this with my friend," there's a chunk of sapphire on the factory floor that people work with, like an pet rock.
Rawr
Did pulling it out of my pants a few hundred times a month scratch it? No? Good. Guess it was hard enough.
Oh... And my phone's okay too!
i'm already reading about idiots showering with their phones because apple said it was water proof and they can't leave it outside the shower to listen to music, they need it in the shower with them
I'm sorry, but without significant consumer complaints, I fail to see how this is even a topic to sit around and bullshit about.
Other than perhaps a Kardashian, no one is carrying around diamonds in their pockets to scratch their pseudo-sapphire iPhone lens.
All irregularities ities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension.
Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life.
Medium atomic weights are available:
Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel.
Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
Did Apple ever say it was sapphire all the way through? If not, and if it doesn't scratch from normal use, why is this a problem?
Sapphire is 9 on Mohs scale. If they measured 6, then it is ordinary lens glass.
This. Even quartz does better, at hardness 7. Topaz is 8, which is what the watch was rated at (still below the 9 for sapphire though, which is a bit surprising.)
If you check their website Apple states 'Sapphire crystal lens cover' in the specs of their phones: http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone... , so if you are trying to scratch the underside claiming sapphire, then you are probably doing something wrong?
Is this a non-story or did I miss something?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If they imply it has hardness 9 like sapphire does and it only has 6 that's false advertising. In practice that's the difference between being scratched by sand or not.
I suspect a lens made entirely of sapphire glass would have pretty shitty optics. Using it as a cover would allow improved scratch protection and retain acceptable optical properties. Not much different than putting a lens protector over a camera lens. What's the problem?
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
I am curious if the sapphire layer/coating for the lens is done by Apple, or by someone else. Because there is the distinct chance that Apple is using a vendor's tech that they bankrupted to deliver a product that people don't understand and are complaining about.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
It takes courage to lie to consumers.
http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+in+Court+Case+No+Reasonable+Person+Would+Believe+Our+Ads/article13583.htm
My niece dropped her phone (iPhone 6S) in a parking at the beach last week. When she came back to look for it, someone had ran over it. The protective glass cover was shattered while the screen was fine and in a certain angle you can kind of see a faint line on the rear camera. Otherwise, the phone was fine except for some sand that's now embedded in the case.
It's a PHONE camera, about as good as it will get is for "snapshots". I love it when I see an article by a manufacturer or blogger saying so and so's smartphone camera is "just as good as a DSLR". Just the math alone tells you the SENSOR of even an APS-C consumer grade DSLR is more than 10 times the size of any of the best smartphone sensors. Quantity of sensors, doesn't equal quality.
Update October 5th, 1PM ET:
Apple has confirmed to The Verge that the company uses sapphire in its iPhone camera lens. It appears the correct testing conditions weren't adhered to in JerryRigEverything's tests. "Apple confirms the iPhone 7 camera lens is sapphire, and under proper testing conditions achieves the hardness and purity results expected from sapphire," says an Apple spokesperson.
Shit. I like hating Apple too.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Saw some of the tests.
If laminate is used then a possibility is that the "contractor" i.e. the company that assembled the lens element for Apple reversed the intended placement. That is the glass side of the lens got rotated to the out-side instead of the in-side.
Guess the contractor needs to school employee assemblers in the use of a petrographic microscope with cross-polars to identify the glass side from the sapphire side.
This give Timmy an opening for a law suit to gain billions more.
Ha ha
i always assumed that the lens itself was their fake sapphire, but the cover for the lens was just the normal same shit glass they use on the front. for fucking years i have been yelling at apple to stop making to god damn camera stick out of the phone, because all that lens cover does is get fucked up. it should be /inset/ into the phone instead so you can set it down and not scratch it by setting it down on the god damn table.
So what does the sapphire on the watch use? I highly doubt the testing was done accurately. First of all, it's a YouTube video, not a paper with accurate reproduction parameters but from the few things I can see it seems more like he's shattering layers of the glass. I've done hobby geology and used these tools, you're not supposed to scratch them like a toddler with a pen, you put a little bit of pressure and slide it across the material and measure the your results, rubbing them that way will always get a result, either by destroying your tools or destroying (cracking) the material.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
But it's so shiny!
So, the first line is an absolute killer unless you can ensure that the optical axis of the trigonal crystal is aligned with the optical axis of any lens system you're using (the trilobites learned that 500-odd million years ago when they developed the schizochroal eye to use the refractive power and biocompatibility of calcite but kept the viewing angle of the eye to around a degree. Because otherwise the distortions were unacceptable for their purposes). But for a flat sheet over a screen, that's something you could probably survive. The birefringence would introduce slight distortions if you were viewing the screen through polarising sunglasses, but that wouldn't be much of an issue, no more than having to tickle the cat's whisker to get the radio to work, as I believe is recommended for using Apple phones. As a thin screen over the front of the lens, you could get away with it as long as you cut your slices perpendicular to the trigonal axis of the crystal. And kept the divergence angle of rays passing through different parts of the screen down to a few degrees. (So to get a 3m field of view out of the lens, your subject would need to be something more than 150m away.)
Pleochroism - I'd hardly consider that a problem, as long as you didn't give a shit about the colours of what you were rendering and displaying. But since Apple don't market their devices to people "into" design and appearence and shit like that, that's not worth wasting time on. I have to do colour-matching as part of my job, which is why I carry certified colour standards with me for my technical work, but obviously that's not Apple's target audience.
Or maybe, just maybe, the whole "sapphire" thing ins a marketing scam. In which case, it's marketed at people who value form and advertising over function.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"