INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A bit of good news for the perpetually clumsy
Corning unveiled the latest version of its ubiquitous smartphone-encasing material today at an event in California
Gorilla Glass 6 is, naturally, designed to be more durable than its predecessor, introduced roughly this time two years ago.
The big
takeaways here are the ability to withstand drops from higher heights and, perhaps even more importantly to most users, multiple drops per
&On average, in lab tests, Gorilla Glass 6 survived 15 drops from 1 meter onto rough surfaces, and is up to two times better than Gorilla
Glass 5,& according to a release from Corning
&Under the same test conditions, competitive glass compositions, such as soda lime and aluminosilicate, did not survive the first drop.
As
many recent flagships (the iPhone included) embrace wireless charging, glass backs are becoming a fairly common occurence in the smartphone
As such, many manufacturers are embracing Gorilla Glass on both sides of the handsets — effectively covering ~85-percent of the devices&
That naturally makes the whole thing more vulnerable
On many of these handsets, we&re seeing manufacturers embrace different generations of Gorilla Glass on opposite sides
Sometimes it over price concerns, but in many cases, different numbers have different strengths — some manage drops better, others are
The scratch resistant apparently is about the same as its predecessor
Compromises, it seems, have to be made
It will be interesting to see how ubiquitous Gorilla Glass 6 becomes — and how quickly
Corning is making the material available to manufacturers now
It should take a few months to start arriving in handsets
