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Cellphones Displays Technology

Corning Reveals Gorilla Glass 4, Promises No More Broken IPhones 203

An anonymous reader writes "Corning introduced next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is ten times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market. The company says that the Gorilla Glass 4 so launched is to address the No.1 problem among the smartphones users- screen breakage due to everyday drops."
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Corning Reveals Gorilla Glass 4, Promises No More Broken IPhones

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 23, 2014 @10:42AM (#48443969)

    The article says "two times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market". The post reads "ten".

    • by Thantik ( 1207112 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @01:01PM (#48444619)
      Not only that but what's "tougher"? Elastic Modulus? Ductility? Fatigue Limit? Tensile Strength?
      • by fnj ( 64210 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @01:27PM (#48444759)

        Toughness is a perfectly good engineering term with a defined meaning. Look it up. Wikipedia is a decent start [wikipedia.org]. "In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing."

        It's typically measured by an impact test.

        • by Minwee ( 522556 )

          "In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing."

          That includes bending.

        • by steelfood ( 895457 ) on Monday November 24, 2014 @12:20AM (#48447111)

          Actually, even the Wikpedia article you linked gives multiple definitions for toughness, depending on application. Which one is used here remains poorly specified and opens up the possibility of ambiguous marketing platitudes. Now, if they said shear strength was improved overall by a certain percentage, that would be information.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        What, actual physical properties? These are meaningless for marketing!

    • by CrankyFool ( 680025 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @01:12PM (#48444675)

      News for nerds, remember? Ten is simply the base-2 representation of the same number that two represents in base-10. It's exactly the same statement.

      • News for nerds, remember? Ten is simply the base-2 representation of the same number that two represents in base-10. It's exactly the same statement.

        So is that base two too? I can understand a reference to seeing "2" in a binary datastream when talking about bending strength, but I could never really get past second base myself.

      • by Richy_T ( 111409 )

        No. Ten is ten. 10 in base 2 is not ten.

    • by jrumney ( 197329 )
      It doesn't really matter. Gorilla glass 2 is tough enough already to resist scratching by pretty much anything I have in my pockets with it. The problem is not the toughness, it is the strength which results in cracked screens.
  • First article says:
    Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced its next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is two times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.

    Second article says:
    Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is ten times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.

    • by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @10:45AM (#48443983)

      One is in base 10, the other in base 2.

    • What's a factor of five between friends? Just book the difference as 'goodwill'.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      It depends on whether you consider the gorilla glass version previously used by iPhones as a competitor or not. Generally the reading "competitive cover glass now in the market" would be a comparison against only glass made by OTHER COMPANIES', not previous versions of your own product which are now deprecated.

    • by berchca ( 414155 )

      Per the Corning website:
      "In lab tests, Gorilla Glass 4 withstood such drops up to 2X better than competitive glass designs."

      (http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/en/glass-types/gorilla-glass-4)

      • Oh, great: the infamous "up to X times..." . So what's the mean and standard deviation of the relative break strength?

        • Just average it out. The new glass is (negative infinity + X)/2 times tougher. Or refactoring for properties of infinity, it is negative infinity times tougher, also known as infinity times weaker.
    • Not only that, but a couple days ago, CNET reported that although Gorilla glass is tougher, manufacturers now know this and are ordering phones with THINNER glass to reduce weight. The thinner glass breaks more easily, so the improvement in toughness is negated.
    • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      First article says: Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced its next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is two times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.

      Second article says: Apple supplier Corning on Thursday introduced next-generation Gorilla Glass, which it said is ten times tougher than any competitive cover glass now in the market.

      These are not contradictory. "Up to two times" just means "not more than two times", and similarly "up to ten times" just means "not more than ten times". This means that if it is not more than two times then it is automatically not more than ten times

      Its like if I say "there are no men in the room who are over six feet tall" you could also say "there are no men in the room who are over 100 feet tall", obviously true given the first statement but rather pointless. Of course marketing people might prefer "u

  • How am I supposed to be different if my phone's screen looks like everyone else's?
  • by modmans2ndcoming ( 929661 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @11:06AM (#48444089)

    Please tell us how they achieved this feat or materials engineering.

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )
      Watered down diamonds or Carbon nanotubes? :)
    • Hard refers to scratch resistance. Its antonym is soft.

      Flexible refers to being able to bend. Its antonym is rigid.

    • by real gumby ( 11516 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @11:49AM (#48444305)

      Please tell us how they achieved this feat or materials engineering.

      Oh you silly slashdotter. Sure, you may have studied materials science and engineering, but do you have the real world experience? In the modern corporation it's all about teamwork. Well-managed teams can do more than any one person possibly could. In this case, the engineers make the glass hard. Then marketing adds the flexibility. See? Teamwork. Oh yeah, and management makes it all happen and does extra janatorial tasks like mopping up the excess bucks.

      (Actually, cynicism aside, it's simply that hardness and flexibility are orthogonal axes in materials science).

      • > it's simply that hardness and flexibility are orthogonal axes

        I'm afraid they're not orthogonal: they're negatively correlated. The harder a a substance, typically the less flexible it is likely to be.

        • Yeah, you're quite right that I overstated it by saying they are orthogonal. They are coupled (diamond is not particularly flexible) but not 100% correlated. Different manifestations of the underlying structure.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Yes, because it's not a single material. It's strengthened glass with a thin layer over the top that is highly scratch resistant. Thus it is both very hard in terms of resisting scratches and very flexible (for glass) so that it doesn't shatter.

      This technique is used on many high performance parts these days, for example helicopter rotor blades.

  • I'm only half-kidding. over the past year or two, there's been a nifty cottage industry of small storefronts that perform screen replacements on cell phones. If that number gets cut in half, things are going to get interesting for these store owners. Also, if the phones are not only more shatter resistant but scratch resistant as well, I wonder if it would (forgive the pun) make a dent in sales of Otterbox and other impact resistant cases. Not only would this impact Otter Products, but also many retailers,

    • by mysidia ( 191772 )

      I'm only half-kidding. over the past year or two, there's been a nifty cottage industry of small storefronts that perform screen replacements on cell phones. If that number gets cut in half, things are going to get interesting for these store owners.

      Firstly; I think the old phones will still be widely used for a few more years, as long as the price of a screen replacement is low comparable to the cost of a new phone, I think they will be okay for at least another year, they were always a market of lim

      • While this particular development doesn't affect it waterproofing is something that major phone vendors have been working on and they seem to have managed to make phones with a high degree of waterproofing (at least when new, I do wonder how the seals will age) without making them clunky as hell.

        http://www.digitaltrends.com/m... [digitaltrends.com]

    • Insurance over things you can afford to replace is never worth it.

      For insurance to work, the insurance company needs to charge you a cost that is greater than the annualized cost of loss-- that is, the risk that a loss will happen times the cost of that loss. That can make sense with things like medical bills where the risk is extremely low, but the cost is extremely high and could bankrupt you.

      Doing it with a phone is just costing you more money over the long haul than simply replacing the phone when a lo

    • Somebody needs to go study the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org].

  • Great news on the glass, all for it. But it's still too difficult to repair and replace the glass (and batteries) on these phones due to the adhesive.
    • by necro81 ( 917438 )
      For what it's worth, iPhone screens can be replaced by removing screws. It still takes some skill, and is easier if you have a suction-cup tool, but does not involve adhesive.

      For instance: iPhone 6 teardown [ifixit.com]
  • From the PCMag article: "The company said it survives drops up to 80 percent of the time." That's from a three foot drop. Corning does not promise no more broken iPhone screens as the headline reads. Slashdot, please stop with the click bait headlines. Present facts, please.
    • midget smart phone users of the world now finally have a solution to their screen break problems.

      then rest of us, not so much...

  • from the PC Mag article:

    "They found that Gorilla Glass 4 is up to two times tougher than competitive glass. The company said it survives drops up to 80 percent of the time."

  • Flip phone.

  • I really doubt they promise "no more broken iPhones" when the video admits they only prevent 80% of breaks. That still leaves 1 in 5 broken.
  • by RevWaldo ( 1186281 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @01:06PM (#48444651)
    It works for my glasses well enough.

    .
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      It needs to be glass for the touch screen to work. Things with plastic screens have resistive touch screen input which sucks, so almost all phones use glass and capacitative touch screen input.

    • Not that I expect many to read this, since it's a day later, but polycarbonate is much more scratch-prone than glass, even with the scratch-resistant coating on it.

      It wouldn't work on a phone, because the coating would rub off in fairly short order.

  • The real problem is that it is difficult to replace the glass It it was simple to replace the relative low cost of replacement would mean the occasional breakage wouldn't be a significant problem.
  • I have an old T-mobile Galaxy II (989) that supposedly has gorilla glass on the screen. I've dropped it numerous times and it's never once broken or shattered, and it's now an ancient phone by internet standards. Yet I've seen countless iphones with broken glass. Perhaps the more flimsy, plasticy Android phones actually have an advantage here by flexing instead of shattering? Or is there some other reason this is an Apple problem?

    • Your phone is a sample size of one, compared to countless iPhones. It would be more meaningful to compare the average breakage rate of all Galaxy S2s sold vs its contemporary iPhone model's breakage rate.
  • by ElitistWhiner ( 79961 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @09:33PM (#48446725) Journal

    The collapse of a competitive advantage crystal lens product in GT Advanced which was summarily driven into the ground, bankrupted and which failure narily caused a single Apple iPhone shipment delay.

    Any problems connecting dots, seeing the landscape and strategy now?

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