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Apple Confirms iPhone 7 Rear Camera Cover is Sapphire

keysofanxiety said:
Speak for yourself. I frequently carry a diamond pick and blowtorch in my trouser pocket.
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you make this joke, But there are lots of people who do have diamonds in their pockets :p

Diamonds are the most found gemstone that is placed on rings, especially engagement and wedding rings. it is not uncommon for rings to be taken off and placed in pockets or other places that one may also store their phone, Such as bag, pocket or purse.

SO, as much a joke you're trying to make of it, it's not as uncommon as you think.

There are also tiny bits of silica that may lodge in your pockets that are also rated at Moh 10 that could scratch your phone without you even realising it.
 
I've yet to have an issue with iPhone camera lenses. I'm not going to worry about it now.

I'll take Apple at their word until I have a reason not to. Otherwise this is not worth worrying about IMHO.
 
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yanksfan114 said:
Well I'm interested in all smartphones regardless of the company. Would have never known about how wireless charging works until I looked into the GS7.
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The good news is, that's not wireless charging. You have to set your phone down on a pad that is plugged into the wall.

Real wireless charging, what Apple is working on, is where you can fully operate your phone without having it plugged into the wall and/or placed on a pad rendering it useless. Where you walk into your house, office or in your car and the device just begins charging.
 
iReality85 said:
Refresher, for those curious. This is a follow up from his previous vid:

The lens does not scratch with a razor blade, meaning it's not going to scratch with keys in your pocket, or most normal objects people carry around with them that the lens might come in contact with.

It only scratches when a Mohs 6 or greater hardness is used against it (same goes for the Home button). Also if you notice, the point and area at which the lens scratches in Jerry's original vid is when he's applying the most pressure to it with Mohs 6, i.e. really digging into the lens.

Point is, the lens isn't going to scratch under normal scenarios when coming into contact with most objects.
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When he bent that iPhone, I literally could not not look. Thanks for the video though.
 
The fracturing vs. scratching is a completely sufficient explanation. Even diamonds can fairly easily be crushed or chipped with materials of much lower hardness. Proper hardness (scratch) tests are performed with much less force applied down into the glass compared to what is seen in the video. You want to make sure you are testing the surface hardness of the material, not the compressive or flexural strength.
 
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Wait wait wait.

So if I attach my iPhone to a kite (bear with me) and fly it to 3000 feet (it can happen) above a 100 foot square of asphalt and release the phone and it drops 3000 feet it will be damaged when it hits the ground?

Why is this news?
 
It's not scratching the lens, it's fracturing it because probably pressing too hard.

I think Apple figured that people will never be able to assert that much pressure at such a small point in real life, so they reduced the thickness of sapphire for better light penetration. Just my 2 cents.
 
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Its a sapphire, but in a little different way. Like when you buy Orange juice where it says on the packing "At least 20% orange". So it is Orange juice, but its not the real orange juice that you would expect without reading the label. But at the end, it still is orange juice.
 
I think the durability of sapphire is exaggerated in general. I dropped my iPhone 5s on a treadmill and it then slid across a carpet floor; the sapphire lens had a scratch (fracure?) across it.
 
Nozuka said:
There must be a more scientific way to test this...
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Yes there is. Super simple.
Even I have it. It cost about 300 usd. A simple tool that use heat and electrical properties to determine the material. It can tell the difference between diamond, sapphire, glass, Jade, and serveral other minerals.
 
This might be the most interesting article ever posted by MacRumors from a technical point of view.
 
Legit enough to me. My guess is that apple had engineering specifications for sapphire with the iPhone 7. Enter modern materials science. Those speciifications are met, and marketing is off to the races. Is that good enough for the vast majority of users? Probably. Is that good enough for the hyper-discerning internet types? I can think of better things to worry about today.
 
aliensporebomb said:
Wait wait wait.

So if I attach my iPhone to a kite (bear with me) and fly it to 3000 feet (it can happen) above a 100 foot square of asphalt and release the phone and it drops 3000 feet it will be damaged when it hits the ground?
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If Steve was still around this would not be acceptable! ;)

It's like every iPhone launch lately. People go through everything imaginable to try to find a flaw with the phone because it comes from Apple. No other phone manufacturer in the world gets this treatment. Just look at Samsung, it took the note 7 literally catching fire and injuring people or burning property before it finally got news coverage. With the iPhone, if 10 users have an activation issue it gets reported on the 10 o' clock news as a breaking story.
 
Good morning from the optics department!

Word of the day: birefringence. In addition to being a great word when playing hangman, it has a lot to do with Apple's sapphiregate.

Sapphire is a birefringent material which means it refracts (bends) light differently depending on the polarization of light. This property makes it difficult to use any substantial thickness of sapphire in imaging optics. A thick (relatively speaking) sapphire plate may introduce double images.

Sapphire is a great material in many applications. It is very durable both physically and chemically, transmits light from deep infrared to ultraviolet, and is relatively inexpensive. However, in addition to birefringence, it has high dispersion (its refracting power depends on the wavelength) and high refracting index. While high refracting index might be thought to be beneficial in optical applications (thinner lenses), it introduces significant reflections on the interfaces.

While it is common to use sapphire in watches, its use in an imaging system is much more complicated. To my eye Apple's coating seems to be a thing single-layer sapphire on glass with good AR coating on the inner glass surface. (I did not take my iP7+ apart, so this is just guessing.) This approach sacrifices some light due to first-surface reflections but gives otherwise sufficiently good optical properties and good durability.

So, Apple is not not using solid sapphire for cost reasons. A solid sapphire widow would probably cost around 10 cents (pick EUR/$, whichever you prefer) in iPhone quantities. It is just that sapphire is not an ideal optical material.

(Having said this much, I have to emphasize that it is possible to compensate for sapphires undesirable optical properties in the optical system. This, however, would make the optics quite complicated from the manufacturing point of view and exclude many otherwise useful constructions.)
 
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yanksfan114 said:
This is kind of off topic, but isn't it crazy how much you learn about random things in the world because of a phone? If it wasn't for smartphones I wouldn't know nearly as much about SoC's, display technology, materials (ceramic, glass, aluminum, sapphire), and even cameras. All the coverage on the little things that makes a smartphone great is really interesting stuff.
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Could not agree more with you.

I do have to say here I'm an IT student, but I've learned so much about stuff that my training has never covered. Indeed like how a camera works (aperture, size of pixels etc.), display stuff (such as difference between full sRGB and P3), and materials as well. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. I did know a lot about SoCs though. But what I have learned from Apple is that specs don't matter as much as many think. We always learned how cores, clock speed and all that kind of stuff is amazing and all. Yet, the iPhone outperforms every single smartphone out there thanks to incredible chip architecture AND superb integration between hardware and software.

Technology keeps getting more amazing every single day. That's why I got into IT! :)
 
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