- Corning today unveiled Gorilla Glass Victus, a display that promises to be less prone to scratching and more durable when falling onto hard surfaces.
- A successor to Gorilla Glass 6, the next-gen Gorilla Glass is twice as scratch resistant as its predecessor.
- Devices with Gorilla Glass Victus will be able to survive a drop from six and a half feet.
Corning today announced a new version of its resilient Gorilla Glass that promises to make smartphone displays sturdier than ever before. Dubbed Gorilla Glass Victus, the new display will make smartphones more shatterproof and less likely to get scratched up during everyday use. The latter point is especially interesting because while smartphone displays have become sturdier in recent years, we haven’t seen a lot of progress when it comes to preventing scratches. To that end, Corning boasts that Gorilla Glass Victus has double the scratch resistance of existing Gorilla Glass displays.
Beyond being more scratch-proof, Gorilla Glass Victus will also be much more shatterproof than its predecessor, Gorilla Glass 6. Corning notes that devices with Gorilla Glass Victus displays will be able to survive drops from six and a half feet onto hard surfaces. This is a huge step forward given that many devices can start to crack when dropped from a height of five feet.
“Dropped phones can result in broken phones, but as we developed better glasses, phones survived more drops but also showed more visible scratches, which can impact the usability of devices,” Corning executive John Bayne said in a press release. “Instead of our historic approach of asking our technologists to focus on a single goal – making the glass better for either drop or scratch – we asked them to focus on improving both drop and scratch, and they delivered with Gorilla Glass Victus.”
There’s no indication as to when the first device with Gorilla Glass Victus will hit the market, but the new development is undoubtedly a win for the entire industry at large. Though Apple’s iPhone was the first smartphone to feature next-gen glass from Corning, the company’s specialized glass can now be found on more than 8 billion devices across 45 major brands. Suffice it to say, it’s only a matter of time before the next smartphone you buy ships with Gorilla Glass Victus.
A video from Corning introducing the technology, along with some footage of drop tests, can be viewed below:
Corning claims that the economics of production will remain the same, which is to say we won’t see companies like Apple and Google pass on added production costs to consumers.
As a point of interest, Apple last year invested $250 million Corning to help hasten the development of “state-of-the-art glass processes, equipment and materials integral to the delivery of next-generation consumer devices.”
