The company claims that the new glass is “Corning’s most durable cover glass to date” thanks to a new composition that makes it twice as good as Gorilla Glass 5.
Corning on Wednesday announced Gorilla Glass 6, its latest “flagship” glass that will be seen on phones in the near future. The company claims that the new glass is “Corning’s most durable cover glass to date” thanks to a new composition that makes it twice as good as Gorilla Glass 5. This is music to our ears considering how mobile manufacturers are increasingly adopting all-glass designs, making phones more susceptible to cracking and damage when dropped.
The company says that Gorilla Glass 6 has the ability to survive drops from higher heights. Notably, the glass has also been engineered to survive multiple drops, which is great news for users with butterfingers. During lab tests, Corning claims that Gorilla Glass 6 survived an average of 15 drops from a height of 1 meter on rough surfaces. There is, however, a tradeoff between drop resistance and scratch resistance, which is why Corning says that Gorilla Glass 6 will have the same level of scratch resistance as Gorilla Glass 5.
“Gorilla Glass 6 is an entirely new glass composition that can be chemically strengthened to give it significantly higher levels of compression than is possible with Gorilla Glass 5. This enables Gorilla Glass 6 to be more resistant to damage,” said Dr. Jaymin Amin, vice president of technology and product development, Corning Gorilla Glass and Corning Specialty Materials. “Moreover, with breaks during drops being a probabilistic event, the added compression helps increase, on average, the likelihood of survival through multiple drop events.” The new industry trend is to offer phones with glass backs, which not only offers a more premium look compared to traditional metal unibody designs, but also allows for new technologies like wireless charging and opens the door for more creative options like printed glass backs, among other things. Corning feels Gorilla Glass 6 will offer more durability, better touch sensitivity and efficient wireless charging than ever before.
Production of Gorilla Glass 6 is already underway and Corning says “multiple customers” are evaluating the glass. We should expect to see the first phones with the new glass in the next several months.
