Gorilla Glass is bringing the latest addition to the series, the Gorilla Glass 5. The company first entered the electronic device business nine years ago, since then it has become one of the strongest glasses to be used in these devices due to their constant improvement in scratches resistance and the ability to keep making it a thinner glass. Their global smartphone insertion into the market was around 10 percent when they were first shipped back in 2007. Now in 2016, that number has escalated up to 73 percent.
Corning says their glass has been used more than 4.5 billion devices worldwide by manufacturers such as Huawei, Asus, LG, Lenovo, HP, HTC, and Samsung. And so far, Corning has demonstrated their glass is far more resistant to damage than any other plastic or competitive glass as it helps to withstand the everyday use of phones.
Gorilla Glass’ optical clarity makes photo and videos look almost as good as the real life itself, and its touch is ideal for texting and browsing. And now that Corning just announced their latest version of the Gorilla Glass, which is the glass used in most smartphones and tablets around the world the number of devices using this lens could only increase.
The new Gorilla Glass 5 is a chemically strengthened glass formulated to resist more falling impacts than its predecessor. According to the official statement, the new glass will now survive 1.6-meter and shoulder-height drops onto hard, rough surfaces up to 80 percent of the time without shattering.
Corning referred to other competitive glasses to be four times less resistant than the new Gorilla Glass 5. Nevertheless, the company’s competitors are not so far behind as one would think.
“85 percent of smartphone owners have dropped their phones at least once in the past year, and that two-thirds of those drops happening from waist height to shoulder height” A study referred by Corning says.
During an interview, Corning’s SVP Jim Steiner said the shipment currently amounts to around 1 billion devices per year, but the numbers are likely to increase with the new Gorilla Glass 5. However, this is nothing but a positive projection of the latest addition to the Gorilla Glass series.
The company measures the scratch resistance by sticking a phone in a purse in a spinning barrel. The current version is focused on drop survival, added Steiner.
Corning also held a demonstration on Wednesday showcasing their new glass in their Silicon Valley offices. These tests were mostly face drops rather than edge or corner drops which are the most common way to shatter a phone’s glass. General Manager John Bayne said that in those cases it also depends on the phone’s overall design, not just the glass.
“What will define the performance of the overall device on those types of corner drops is stiffness of the phone design, but also how the glass is packaged…Much of this is dependent on what’s known as the ‘proudness’ of the glass, which refers to how high above the phone the glass sits,” aid John Bayne.
For the time being Corning will still ship previous versions of the gorilla glass to individual manufacturers but it is likely that sometime soon they will only use the latest glass.
Source: Corning