Sapphire glass is already used for the lens cover of the iPhone 5s and the Touch ID home button, but its more exciting application is in the form of a display that can handle an incredible amount of abuse.
Sapphire glass is roughly 2.5 times stronger than the glass currently used in smartphones, many of which use Gorilla Glass from Corning. Jeff Nestel-Patt, Marketing Director at GT Advanced Technologies calls the technology, “virtually scratch free,”
In the video below, watch as an iPhone retrofitted with a thin sheet of Sapphire glass is smashed and scratched with a piece of concrete. Gorilla Glass shown in this video shows scratches, but the Sapphire glass simple breaks pieces of the concrete apart with no damage to the actual screen.
Two issues are holding back an iPhone with a full Sapphire display, the cost of the material and full scale production. GT Advanced Technologies pegs the cost premium at three to four times that of chemically strengthened glass, but according to Nestel Patel’s statements at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, mass production will help bring the cost in check. He expects that this will be a standard feature on smartphones in the next few years.
