Corning Announces Gorilla Glass 5 With Improved Mobile Display Protection

Corning Inc. announced its newest generation of Gorilla Glass this week.

During lab tests, Corning discovered its Gorilla Glass 5 displays survived “up to 80 per cent of the time when dropped facedown from 1.6m”.

While this super-strong glass has not yet hit the market, the first phones that feature Gorilla Glass 5 are scheduled to start showing up on shelves in the next few months.

The company stressed that Gorilla Glass 5 would resist to face-down drops from 5.2 feet at an 80 percent rate.

General Manager of Corning Gorilla Glass, John Bayne, said the technology will only continue to improve.

And rough surfaces are particularly brutal for delicate smartphones, so much of Corning’s research and development of the new glass involved drops on rough surfaces.

The company accepts that overall performance will depend on how manufacturers build the glass into their smartphones, but with 4.5 billion devices now using Gorilla Glass, results on the strength of the new glass will come in thick and fast – especially from the excitable and unpredictable fingers of giddy new iPhone 7 owners.

Corning Gorilla Glass 5 is commercially available and is expected to be on product models from leading global brands later this year.

Quoting a recent 11-country study, Corning says that over 85 percent of smartphone owners drop their phone at least once a year. Also, 55% people have dropped their phones (either intentionally or unintentionally) three times or more. Researchers at Corning have done thousands of hours of testing to find out what and how to stop display glass break when a smartphone or tablet falls. Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Lenovo, Huawei, LG, HP, and Asus have all made devices using the glass, along with other unnamed device makers.

The company further claims that Gorilla Glass 5 provides damage resistance, optical clarity and touch sensitivity to smartphones. And now, the latest Glass is more stronger and can survive higher drops.