Corning’s Gorilla Glass has been giving us smartphones with toughened displays for years now, and today the latest version of Gorilla Glass has been revealed.
Gorilla Glass 5 is now official, adding further protection from drops. According to Corning, Gorilla Glass 5 survives drops up to four times better than competing glass designs. In Corning’s testing, Gorilla Glass 5 survived up to 80 percent of the time when dropped face down onto rough surfaces from a distance of 1.6 meters, or 5.25 feet.
Corning says that Gorilla Glass 5 is now commercially available and is expected to begin appearing on devices from “leading global brands” later in 2016.
Most mobile devices have huge slabs of glass on their front, and because most consumers carry their thin and light smartphones everywhere, there are a lot phones that end up taking a tumble. According to a study, more than 85 percent of smartphone owners have dropped their devices at least once per year. Those screens are cheap to replace when they’ve been shattered, and they’re dangerous to fingers when they’re not replaced. Corning is aiming to make shattered screens a thing of the past, and while they may never be totally eliminated, Gorilla Glass 5 gets Corning one step closer to that goal.
