Corning Announces Gorilla Glass 4; Videos with the Mythbusters Included

[Jonny Kansas]

I remember reading somewhere in the discovery portion of the chapter 11 filing for GT Advanced Technologies that in an early pre-production test run for iPhone screens something like 600 pounds of glass was produced, and not one ounce was usable.

Sent from my Droid Turbo

Whoops!

Sent from my Note 4

 

[thunderbolt_nick]

The best of both worlds could possibly come from an ultra-thin layer of Sapphire over another ultra-thin layer of Gorilla Glass 3 (or 4). Then the two combined would retain the best qualities of each while not also suffering from the worst aspects of each. Another possibility is that perhaps Sapphire could be coaxed to grow in its natural crystalline structure right onto the Gorilla Glass, making it essentially chemically bonded. This would truly innovate the screens we now use, but this is purely hypothetical and there may be very basic scientific reasons why they can't accomplish such (at least with present technologies).

I never did get the 'hubbub' about Sapphire Glass and almost sounds like a buzzword more than anything. I knew it wouldn't kick off and when people told me about it around the office I was like, "OK sure." Although, they do use it as the glass of the camera on the back of iPhones still as a protective cover.

 

[FoxKat]

I'm guessing sheer cost. Laminating the GG to the soda lime glass provides a balance between pure performance (and weight) versus cost.

Hey Narsil, good to see you posting again!

 

[Ollie]

I remember reading somewhere in the discovery portion of the chapter 11 filing for GT Advanced Technologies that in an early pre-production test run for iPhone screens something like 600 pounds of glass was produced, and not one ounce was usable.

Sent from my Droid Turbo

They couldn't seed the sapphire properly. It just isn't feasible to create artificial sapphire on such a large scale. The images I posted above were some of the problems they ran into.

One run of artificial sapphire costs $25k. That's a huge loss if the run is a failure. That's why GT was the only one to accept Apple's offer. Many other companies knew better and refused to try to produce it in the scale that Apple needed.

 

[Narsil]

I never did get the 'hubbub' about Sapphire Glass and almost sounds like a buzzword more than anything. I knew it wouldn't kick off and when people told me about it around the office I was like, "OK sure." Although, they do use it as the glass of the camera on the back of iPhones still as a protective cover.

If you ever get a watch with a sapphire dome, you'll understand the 'hubbub.' It simply doesn't scratch. Your watch case can be beat to heck and back and the dome is as crystal clear <pun intended> as the day you bought it.

Essentially, in order to scratch sapphire, you need another sapphire, or a diamond, to rub on it. Unless you happen to have sapphire dust or diamond dust in your pockets, you shouldn't have to worry about ever scratching a sapphire crystal display. Breaking, on the other hand, is a different issue entirely.