Rising Sapphire Display Cost May Limit Production of 5.5-Inch iPhone 6

[Jvanleuvan]

Sapphire Durability

So a friend of mine who is a materials guy was explaining to me why sapphire is more "shatter" resistant than gorilla glass. His explanation makes sense to me:

Sapphire is NOT as flexible as Gorilla glass; however it does have some flexibility. But phones screens DO NOT SHATTER because they were flexed beyond their tolerance. Look at the Corning video that they show how flexible gorilla glass is, it bends nearly to the curve of a banana; but on a phone the glass is attached to a rigid phone body; Do you think when you drop your iPhone it bends that much? He explained then phone screens "shatter" i.e. Spider-crack across the screen due to being essentially "Crushed" against some hard surface (usually point pressure, i.e landing on a corner or rock etc...) This causes essentially a "chip" which due to glass' properties propagates spider-web-cracks all over the screen.

He says that sapphire is much more resistant to initial "chips" far less likely for those "chips" to cause spider-cracks.

Just some input

 

[zipa]

people need to understand that the cost of iphone is relatively low compared to the cost of monthly bills.

on a 2 year contract, you'll spend around $2000 to $3000.

it's irelevant iphone 6 costs $100 or $200 more on contractual price.

even if the iphone costs $500 on 2 year old contract, people will still buy it.

People also need to remember that there is a world outside the US borders. A world, from where the vast majority of iPhone sales comes from. A 24 month contract (no phone, just the subscription) sets me back around 500 euros. Add to that a Nexus 5 and we are at around 850 € for two years cost of ownership.

Now, if the price increase on the iPhone jacks up the base price of it to around 800 €, I guarantee that there will be a lot of people thinking hard and well whether or not getting one makes any sense at all.

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a new iPhone at $1,5k would be a status symbol and would sell a lot because of this.

The 1980's called. They said that they'd like to have back their epithet of a cellphone as a status symbol.

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My 2 year iPhone has no scratches at all because I take good care of it.

My iPhone 5 has no scratches (on the display). I don't care about it at all, but except for quartz sand there really isn't anything that would scratch gorilla glass.

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Everyone should believe whatever they want. However the sentiment in the above cracks me up. Go back to before there was a 4" screen in iPhones and this crowd would sling the very same kind of message about any size other than the only and only "perfect" size of 3.5"

Don't forget that it is a FACT that there will never be a smaller iPad, either. Which is a pity, since I'd really like a smaller one, with, say, 7,9" screen or so...