What's in a piece of glass? A lot, apparently. Recent devices have made a big deal out of something called Gorilla glass, with the Dell Streak most famously
teasing its indestructibility to great fanfare. Manufacturer Corning claims the glass can withstand nearly anything us puny humans can throw at it, and electronics makers are flocking to the screens in droves.
But what is it that makes Gorilla glass so special, and how does it stack up against all our other panes of glass — particularly the iPhone 4's
new aluminosilicate screen?
The most prevalent type of glass in use today is known as soda-lime glass. This variety is what's most commonly found in windows, bottles, and of course, cell phones and mobile devices. But despite it's prevalence, it has one fatal flaw — durability. "Glass is a brittle material,"
explains Dr. Donnell Walton, an engineer at Corning. "Brittle materials are extremely strong under compression but extremely weak under tension."
In other words, if you're to drop a device manufactured in the last few years, its screen will probably be the first thing to break. You don't need to travel much farther than your local Apple Store to find a swath of people mourning the untimely death of their iPhones, marred by a four-foot drop onto cold, hard concrete. Because we're unlikely to become less clumsy anytime soon, Corning has taken an alternate route and tried to improve the performance of the screens instead — and that's where Gorilla glass comes in.
Corning's manufacturing process involves chemically strengthening a plane of glass to allow larger ions to penetrate a screen's surface more deeply than traditional glass. Whether that makes sense to you or not, the end result is a screen that's not only able to withstand more pressure than traditional glass, but also scratch-resistant as well. A stronger panel means thinner glass can be produced, and that's an immediate benefit for tiny phones and devices.
Of course, the new iPhone is promising a similar, indestructible style of screen — one that's curiously similar to Gorilla glass. Apple promises the screen to be "20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic" and also incredibly scratch resistant as well. This is all due to a panel of aluminosilicate glass, the same sort of material used by Corning to manufacturer their own device screens. In fact, the similarities are so consistent that
some have
questioned whether Gorilla glass is behind Apple's new phone. We've reached out to the company, but have yet to receive a reply. — something that's neither been confirmed nor denied by the company.
But if the iPhone 4 is indeed rocking the indestructible glass, you wouldn't know it based an early test to hit the web. Repair shop iFix Your i claims to have received a number of iPhone parts in advance of the device's ship date, and
decided to perform a drop test on the phone's new screen. From 3.5ft the device survived the first two drops, until finally cracking upon the third. The results aren't really reflective of what we've expect of Gorilla glass products thus far, perhaps proving that not all aluminosilicate screens are created equal.
Regardless, Gorilla glass and aluminosilicate screens are the next big thing for technology manufacturers, and its no secret why. While placing that shiny new phone in your key-filled pocket may not seem like the wisest of moves, its good to know our next generation devices should escape completely unscathed.
Images via Apple, Smart Planet, and I Fix your i.
