You know that mini heart palpitation you get when your brand new Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus drops out of the car when you’re literally on the way to buy a case for it? The company behind Gorilla Glass, Corning, feels your pain and has doubled up on protection.
Their evolved Gorilla Glass 6 is supposedly twice as likely to survive drops as its primate ancestors. It can also survive 15 drops from 1m in height onto rough surfaces. That’s not something we would suggest you test for yourself though.
“As consumers become more dependent on their smartphones, the opportunity for potentially damaging drops is also on the rise. Now more than ever, it’s critical that the cover glass provides outstanding protection,” says John Bayne, vice president and general manager at Corning Gorilla Glass. “Corning Gorilla Glass 6 improves on Gorilla Glass 5 by surviving drops from higher heights, but, more importantly, has been engineered to survive multiple drops.”
Smart devices have become much more than a way to make calls. They are now the keepers of data, dog pictures, passwords and important files. If your smartphone breaks, you lose your whole life — in a sense. That’s certainly how it feels, and for that reason Gorilla Glass protects the thing you hold most dear.
Because new smartphones are literally wrapped in glass, to enable wireless charging and for the look of the thing, it has become more important to strengthen the glass used. But that doesn’t mean the glass has to be boring, which is why the updated Gorilla Glass is designed to allow for printed glass backs and other design changes.
Gorilla Glass is used in many of the world’s premium phones. The latest iPhone and Samsung flagship models use, and a lengthy list of other devices are fitted with it, too.
The newest iteration is “currently being evaluated”… which probably means guys in lab coats are throwing their phones out of office buildings as we type this. Hopefully there are cameras running.
Apple will officially reveal their new devices, hopefully encased in Gorilla Glass 6, in September, while we’ll probably only see Samsung’s lineup carrying the evolved innovation when the Samsung Galaxy S10 launches next year.
Source: The Guardian
