Gorilla Glass 5 will survive drops from selfie-taking height
Corning has unveiled its latest version of Gorilla Glass, the toughened glass used for the displays of billions of consumer gadgets.
The fifth version of Gorilla Glass, which is due this autumn, should offer relief for fumble-fingered selfie-takers. Punishment to the glass during Corning's lab tests demonstrated it can survive a 1.6-metre (5-foot) drop up to 80 percent of the time.
Scratches and cracks to screens are annoying, but consumers' biggest worry about dropped phones is the glass shattering -- and that's what Corning's scientists have been aiming to prevent with each new version. Gorilla Glass 5's drop test performance is about a half a metre improvement on Gorilla Glass 4.
"With many real-world drops occurring from between waist and shoulder height, we knew improving drop performance would be an important and necessary advancement," said John Bayne, vice president and general manager of Corning Gorilla Glass.
Corning SVP Jim Steiner told TechCrunch that a survey the company recently conducted showed the average height from which people drop their phone is over 1 metre.
"Based on our internal data on drop events, our data shows that Gorilla Glass 5 outperforms 4 by 1.8-times," he said. However, the new glass's scratch resistance is only on a par with the current version.
According to Corning, since the first version of Gorilla Glass was introduced 10 years ago, it has now been used on 4.5 billion devices across 1,800 models and 40 brands.
The glass is available for handset and other device makers now and should arrive in devices later this year.