Corning's 'Project Phire' scratch-resistant glass takes on sapphire

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The new material will offer both extreme impact damage and scratch resistance.

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Ill believe it when I see it... last 3 generations of gorilla glass have screamed about being tougher but the tests they show are not real world impacts as they slowly apply more pressure to the centre of the glass and compare it the previous gen which broke at a lower pressure... its not a tangible improvement as pressure does NOT gradually increase when you drop a phone and it certainly does not hit the centre of the display, I have found all generations of the gorilla glass to be similar apart from the scratch resistance is improving.

Need an alternative really...

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Originally Posted by Hicks12

the tests they show are not real world impacts as they slowly apply more pressure to the centre of the glass and compare it the previous gen which broke at a lower pressure... its not a tangible improvement as pressure does NOT gradually increase when you drop a phone and it certainly does not hit the centre of the display

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I'm guessing you didn't actually watch the video?

Either way, that test doesn't look particularly 'real world', no one actually drops their phone PERFECTLY flat on its face.

Didnt actually see a video in the article must not have loaded for me, have watched it now and it does look like a much better test later on but again I reserve judgement till the actual devices come out with it :P. The test before that they used at CES and everything marketing related was the first pressure machine you saw in the video which is useless :P

I notice they explicitly avoid comparing its performance against the last gen of Gorilla Glass, which doesn't inspire much confidence TBH. 'Survives real-world drops twice as often ... as competitive glass'. So... which competitive glass?

Though one thing is at least sapphire matches silicon carbide (sand) on the Mohs scale. It's something that's always made me laugh, they show how impressive their special glass is by showing how a (comparatively very soft) iron nail fails to scratch the screen, yet some grit in your pocket will have no trouble scratching it...

Heck, even standard unhardened glass is harder than iron!

TBH though a lot of the trouble with drop breaks can be solved with case design e.g. using polymers rather than glass or metals for the back/sides and have the screen recessed a bit. Weirdly though the more fragile materials are often seen as synonymous with 'expensive' or 'quality'.

The thing with these drop tests though is reliability/reproducibility.

You can take 2 identical phones and drop them from very different heights and the one falling the shortest distance might break when the other doesn't.

I find it's more about angles and luck. I have seen people with broken HTC One m7 screens who say they hardly dropped them, yet my m7 got slammed in a car door so hard that the case cracked and bent...but the screen didn't have a scratch on it!

As with so many things, the devil is in the detail.

Yeah they should launch it with the same gorilla name....

I have a sapphire screen phone and it is pretty amazing. I tried keying it and it was completely unmarked. There are tests of the screen on the internet where they were unable to scratch it in a bag of gravel. I think Corning have a lot to live up to there. Sapphire also works better for capacitive screens than glass, to the extent that it works whilst wet or through gloves.

Also (natural) sand isn't silicon carbide, it is silicon dioxide (aka silica, quartz) which has a mohs hardness of 7, somewhat less than sapphire. Silicon carbide is only found in manufactured sandpaper and similar abrasives.

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Originally Posted by Butcher

I have a sapphire screen phone and it is pretty amazing. I tried keying it and it was completely unmarked. There are tests of the screen on the internet where they were unable to scratch it in a bag of gravel. I think Corning have a lot to live up to there. Sapphire also works better for capacitive screens than glass, to the extent that it works whilst wet or through gloves.

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Wouldn't that just be down to the digitiser used though? The actual screen doesn't have much to do with the touchscreen functionality - you don't actually have to touch or apply pressure to it to register a tap.

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Originally Posted by Butcher

Also (natural) sand isn't silicon carbide, it is silicon dioxide (aka silica, quartz) which has a mohs hardness of 7, somewhat less than sapphire. Silicon carbide is only found in manufactured sandpaper and similar abrasives.

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Hmm, perhaps I'm confusing it with stories of sandpaper scratches. I was under the impression beach sand contained some SiC, not purely, however even that may not be true apart from certain places.

Still, non-sapphire Gorilla Glass is apparently 6-6.5 Mohs, so still not as hard as sand, hence scratching.

But as I said, even standard glass should survive fairly well against keying as it's already far harder than iron/steel, hence it's a gimmicky and pretty useless marketing stunt. I often use steel razor blades on everyday glass windows to remove paint drips without scratching them. It's also why it's a bad idea to use your expensive new kitchen knife on a glass chopping board.

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Originally Posted by watercooled

Wouldn't that just be down to the digitiser used though? The actual screen doesn't have much to do with the touchscreen functionality - you don't actually have to touch or apply pressure to it to register a tap.

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Between the digitiser and your finger is the glass/sapphire screen cover though, hence why it affects touch screen usage. The glass acts as the dielectric part of the capacitor, sapphire is better at this, so it is more sensitive to touch and so your finger can be slightly further away, through gloves for instance, and it can filter out noise from water droplets better.

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Originally Posted by watercooled

But as I said, even standard glass should survive fairly well against keying as it's already far harder than iron/steel, hence it's a gimmicky and pretty useless marketing stunt. I often use steel razor blades on everyday glass windows to remove paint drips without scratching them. It's also why it's a bad idea to use your expensive new kitchen knife on a glass chopping board.

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It depends on the steel, but yes it's probably harder than key steel. Hardened steel can reach around 7 mohs hardness though, so some steel objects may be able to scratch phone screens.

I would've thought the dielectric properties of the screen were fairly insignificant when used in this application, and glasses can have very similar εr to sapphire, though I'm not sure about specifically Gorilla Glass. Still, I'd be surprised if it were enough of a difference for it to be a engineering consideration.

Do you know of any comparisons demonstrating the difference?