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Corning Again Criticizes Sapphire as Potential Alternative to Gorilla Glass
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Honestly, I seriously trust in Apple's ability to make moves only when it will benefit both their company and the customer. They don't do deals or try to impress their stockholders. They don't make deals for any other reason.
They don't let emotions factor in either for positive or negative. Even with a good relationship with INTEL but a competitor comes up with a better long-term alternative --> "Sorry, Intel, it's just business". On the flipside, they have every reason to cut SAMSUNG out of their supply-chain, but it would be bad for Apple and for their customers so they simply bite the bullet and continue to do business with their enemy. (However, there will come a day when doing business with Samsung is a thing of the past, I believe.)
So, Apple has demonstrated that they have the patience of a saint in my opinion. They make moves only when it is in their best interest and they wouldn't be making a move to Sapphire if it wasn't going to be a good long-term solution.
They don't let emotions factor in either for positive or negative. Even with a good relationship with INTEL but a competitor comes up with a better long-term alternative --> "Sorry, Intel, it's just business". On the flipside, they have every reason to cut SAMSUNG out of their supply-chain, but it would be bad for Apple and for their customers so they simply bite the bullet and continue to do business with their enemy. (However, there will come a day when doing business with Samsung is a thing of the past, I believe.)
So, Apple has demonstrated that they have the patience of a saint in my opinion. They make moves only when it is in their best interest and they wouldn't be making a move to Sapphire if it wasn't going to be a good long-term solution.
Well, to be fair, hardness and fracture toughness are two completely different properties, and often materials that are high in one can be pretty deficient in the other.
Fracture toughness tell you about the amount of energy it takes for cracks to form and propagate. Hardness is the resistance to indentation or localized plastic deformation (scratching). For instance, metals and some plastics tend to be tough (takes a lot of energy to break them into multiple pieces), but can also be soft and deform easily (doesn't take much energy to scratch or dent them). On the other hand, ceramics are often very hard, but with that hardness can come brittleness and low toughness.
I don't know. Are all things equal otherwise? For me, other specs and functionality are more important and part of the buying decision.
Really? Ive never used case once and I've had every iPhone since the minute the first was released in the UK and never broken any of the glass, so you can't be that careful with them!
That's true, but we already know that most people don't pay attention to details.
Just witness all the naive drooling that goes on around here whenever an article mentions Liquid Metal (which should probably be called Plastic Molding Metal or Glasslike Metal or something more accurate).
The marketing name is more important than the actual material characteristics.
So if I were Corning, I'd rename Gorilla Glass as "Diamond Glass". Everyone knows diamond is harder. heh heh
As you say, it's all in the marketing.
Typical
This is so typical of the commenters on this site: an expert in a specific field makes a handful of statements, and everyone commenting immediately assumes
A.) since this person is speaking (in some way) against Apple, they are wrong and
B.) they know more than this person.
Some of his statements are a bit off, but I'm always blown away by the folks that jump on here and immediately try to disprove someone that is unapologetically more qualified to make claims than they are.
This is so typical of the commenters on this site: an expert in a specific field makes a handful of statements, and everyone commenting immediately assumes
A.) since this person is speaking (in some way) against Apple, they are wrong and
B.) they know more than this person.
Some of his statements are a bit off, but I'm always blown away by the folks that jump on here and immediately try to disprove someone that is unapologetically more qualified to make claims than they are.
what is the screen element in the ipad air made from? i find it to be really flimsy compared to the 1st gen ipad it replaced. if im sitting in a room with enough light to make a reflection in the screen, i can sometimes see it distorting with touching the screen.
I hope Apple is able to do more with Sapphire than they did with liquid metal.
I mean the tray release pin was cool and all, but I was hoping for more from the liquid metal department. However, what it did show is that Apple carefully tests it's potential materials and determines if it will really work for their needs or not.
I'm always excited to see Apple pushing the envelope of their manufacturing processes, Sapphire I'm sure will have its pros/cons like any other material. But I trust Apple to use it in the appropriate places and the approriate times within their product lines (existing products, or future products). They won't just throw it just to say they have Sapphire unless it really is beneficial for their uses.
I mean the tray release pin was cool and all, but I was hoping for more from the liquid metal department. However, what it did show is that Apple carefully tests it's potential materials and determines if it will really work for their needs or not.
I'm always excited to see Apple pushing the envelope of their manufacturing processes, Sapphire I'm sure will have its pros/cons like any other material. But I trust Apple to use it in the appropriate places and the approriate times within their product lines (existing products, or future products). They won't just throw it just to say they have Sapphire unless it really is beneficial for their uses.
Yet, even you state "Some of his statements are a bit off . . ."
So are you the only one that gets to determine the degree to which his statements may be off ("a bit"), or biased?
Agreed. I will trust what they do, as they have shown an unmatched patience for certain technologies.
I am surprised Corning was so forthright. They were the ones that put Corning/Gorilla Glass back on the map in 2006.
That person wasn't just speaking against Apple. He was speaking against a technology that is directly competing with his own technology, and he is losing lots of money because Apple is using the other technology. It's obvious that this person will be extremely biased.
The posters here don't know more than this Corning representative. However, I'm quite sure that some of the posts here are a lot closer to the truth than what this guy is telling us.
If it were the face of a phone and you dropped it - it would shatter. I don't see your point. I never said anything about scratching.
Are you going to tell me dropping a device made out of Sapphire can't or wouldn't break?
The final step in gorilla glass is a pressure coating, that when scratched loses it's integrity making breakage more likely to occur, so scratches cause gorilla glass to shatter. Won't happen like that with sapphire.
Well, not always.
Heck, Apple used a glass back on the iPhone 4 just to say they had one.
Did using ordinary glass for that part make any kind of common sense? Nope. But it was sure cool looking when new
Edit: actually, I partly take that back. They needed a radio transparent back since the bezel was only part of the antenna. However, they could've used another material that was less breakable.
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I'd rather buy a watch with a real crystal but a phone display isn't right for sapphire. I have some materials background and you can all dismiss what the Corning guy says but that doesn't make him a liar.
Making large defect free crystals is difficult at best.
You will always risk fracture along the boundaries and if there is any microscopic defect you risk fracture with the slightest impact.
Watch crystals are rarely thin which means you don't see the issues.
Now cleave, machine, cut a sapphire crystal wafer thin and you will probably have issues. It might be very scratch resistant but the impact resistance will suffer due to crystalline structure.
Glass is an amorphous substance that can be made ultra-thin without the risk of fracture along a crystal boundary and can very high impact resistance.
YMMV but I don't see an iPhone getting a sapphire display.
Apple knows the above also. Apple watch?
Boy, an article like this really brings out the whining Apple-drones who have somehow tied their own self-worth to the proposition that everything Apple does has to be better than anything anybody else else does.
Even though I have three Macs and only one Windows installation I enjoy reading Windows forums. Unlike on the Mac fan sites the Windows posters are usually talking about actual computing. . . you know, software, hardware, configurations or fixes.
On the Apple-fan sites there is a lot of whining because another company did something or said something that the fans do not like. To many Apple really is a religion rather than simply a company that makes some truly great products.
Even though I have three Macs and only one Windows installation I enjoy reading Windows forums. Unlike on the Mac fan sites the Windows posters are usually talking about actual computing. . . you know, software, hardware, configurations or fixes.
On the Apple-fan sites there is a lot of whining because another company did something or said something that the fans do not like. To many Apple really is a religion rather than simply a company that makes some truly great products.
Watch sapphire crystals are small, round, domed, heavy and thick (relative to overall size). Those are the issues nobody in the watch industry cares about. A watch is pretty much a piece of jewellery at this point.
Smartphone screen glass is increasingly large, thin, light, mostly square and flat - a total opposite. Those are considered important for the "tech enthusiasts" and smartphone makers. Now if you make an identical piece out of sapphire, it will have worse properties, with the exception of scratch resistance, than (gorilla) glass. That's all corning is saying.
It's not magic - it's science.
If you want to believe in Apple's new miraculous tech, go ahead, but the sapphire is obviously destined for iwatch where more traditional rules apply and using it is feasible.
Smartphone screen glass is increasingly large, thin, light, mostly square and flat - a total opposite. Those are considered important for the "tech enthusiasts" and smartphone makers. Now if you make an identical piece out of sapphire, it will have worse properties, with the exception of scratch resistance, than (gorilla) glass. That's all corning is saying.
It's not magic - it's science.
If you want to believe in Apple's new miraculous tech, go ahead, but the sapphire is obviously destined for iwatch where more traditional rules apply and using it is feasible.
For example:
The sapphire crystal on a Deep Blue diver's watch is 6 mm thick, is small in comparison to a phone display, and is well supported in a strong circular rim.
Gorilla Glass 3 on a phone is much larger, less well supported, and only 0.5 mm thick.
But if they're attaching a layer of Sapphire to the screen for improved scratch-resistance, isn't the brittle-ness of the Sapphire still an issue? I mean, it hardly matters much to the user if the glass is intact, if the Sapphire fused over it is completely smashed.
For me, the scratch resistance of the iPhone & iPad screens has been excellent, but the brittleness has been the problem. Hence it makes far more sense (to me at least) that this is for something that's vulnerable to minor impacts (scratches) but not being dropped, like the Apple watch. It doesn't sound suitable for handheld device usage - unless there's some magic in that patent above that I didn't understand.