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When buying a next-generation smartphone (or even a mid-range one), you may have noticed that, in the section on the screen, a feature called Corning Gorilla Glass is mentioned. You probably already know that it is a complementary layer that is added to the main panel of your phone, but… do you know exactly what it is and what it is for? Do you have any idea how you can improve the screen of your mobile if it has it integrated? We'll tell you then.
Let's start at the beginning, what is Corning Glass?
It is called Gorilla Glass and it is a material manufactured by the American company Corning Incorporated, mainly dedicated to the manufacture of ceramic and glass derivatives, but for industrial purposes. The Gorilla Glass, in particular, is a synthetic material that reached the market in 2008 and, since then, has been installed in order to function as a protective layer on the main smart devices that have been coming to the market. In fact, it is a transparent and super thin sheet that starts from a combination of alkali-aluminosilicate. One of its most important properties, if not the main one, is high resistance. Hence, mobile phone manufacturers choose it to protect the screen - one of the most sensitive elements of the smartphone, if not the most - from everyday bumps and scratches.
It is true that Corning Gorilla Glass is not unbeatable. Over the years, different generations of crystals have been presented and, at this point, we can indicate that the Corning Glass 5 has already been released, installed for the first time in the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. After the first launch, back in 2012, Corning introduced Gorilla Glass 2, a version that reduced the glass but had the same resistance. A year later we met Gorilla Glass 3, a protective layer that boasted NDR (Native Damage Resistance) technology, with scratch resistance up to three times higher than Gorilla Glass 2. At CES 2015, which was held in Las Vegas, we saw one of the latest versions that has been presented on the market. We are talking about Gorilla Glass 4, a protective glass with a very important feature: being even more resistant to shocks and screen breakage, one of the most common accidents.
Having carried out various tests with simulations of falls, Corning has managed to double the strength of the screen to drop a meter, which would protect the smartphone 80% of accidents that occur daily. Not happy with what has been achieved so far, the Corning team has just presented a new version of the famous crystal. It is, of course, Corning Gorilla Glass 5, a protective layer that promises an 80% survival in drops of up to 1.6 meters and doubles the resistance with respect to scratches. Thus, it doubles the capacity of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 that until now we had in the market.
The new Corning Gorilla Glass 5 has already made its first landing on the market on board the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, a device that was unveiled last week and that has not yet reached users, but will do so in the next weeks. In this way, it is expected that the brand new protective layer Gorilla Glass begins to arrive in the devices that will be presented later this year and early 2017.
