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Smartphone Manufacturers 'Lukewarm' on Sapphire, Call Material Impractical Due to Cost and Supply

proline said:
LOL. How easy it is to open one's pie whole when you don't need to worry about evidence. Got any proof that screen protectors are indistinguishable from a sapphire display? Of course not. As for Steve Jobs, he was working on designs like this at the time of his death:
Image
Not to mention Apple Maps and Find My Friends. Steve Jobs would never have fired his pet Forestall who was holding the company back, and his ill-advised lawsuits, illegal price price fixing, and backroom wage deals with Google were only the tip of the iceberg of the kind of crap he was getting into. He obstructed any attempt to respond to competitive pressures such as larger screen sizes, and he had no major products anywhere near release at the time of his death. Don't get me wrong, Jobs was great, but Apple's current success is far beyond what would have happened under Jobs.
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I never said "indistinguishable from sapphire", I said they were really fricking clear and having it on a phone or other device didn't detract one bit from the display.
 
That's why Omega and Rolex go with sapphire ;)

And just wait until Apple starts using liquid metal + sapphire iPhones.
 
cgc said:
I never said "indistinguishable from sapphire", I said they were really fricking clear and having it on a phone or other device didn't detract one bit from the display.
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Yeah, I know what you said. I also know you pulled your info out of your rear. Again, cite your proof that they are "really friggin clear". You can't, because they aren't. I get that you don't have the vision to appreciate the rather large amount of attenuation and blurring caused by your favorite screen protector, but that's an anecdote, not evidence. Most people can easily tell the difference.
 
zipa said:
We did those same tests four years ago at Nokia. With Gorilla Glass. No scratches, no breakage. Do your homework, a nail wouldn't scratch GG to begin with. Most nails wouldn't even scratch a plain old sheet of window pane glass.



It matters immensely. Sapphire fibers are single crystal fibers.



Great. I'm quite sure that for one reason or another you'll lose the link when it turns out that the crow is yours to eat.

----------



Define "glass".
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How is Nokia doing now? Oh snap.
 
proline said:
LOL. How easy it is to open one's pie whole when you don't need to worry about evidence. Got any proof that screen protectors are indistinguishable from a sapphire display? Of course not. As for Steve Jobs, he was working on designs like this at the time of his death:
Image
Not to mention Apple Maps and Find My Friends. Steve Jobs would never have fired his pet Forestall who was holding the company back, and his ill-advised lawsuits, illegal price price fixing, and backroom wage deals with Google were only the tip of the iceberg of the kind of crap he was getting into. He obstructed any attempt to respond to competitive pressures such as larger screen sizes, and he had no major products anywhere near release at the time of his death. Don't get me wrong, Jobs was great, but Apple's current success is far beyond what would have happened under Jobs.
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What's a pie whole? A whole pie?
 
zipa said:
I do not know what this means, but I can assure you that sapphire glass does not bend no matter who is using it.

EDIT: Yes, a laminate of super-thin sapphire layers would probably bend and flex, especially if sapphire was only used on the outer layers. No, that could not be called "sapphire glass".
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The sapphire glass they showed in the video does. I do not know what you are talking about....
 
zipa said:
No, they used plastic because the resistive touch screen technology that was used in them requires the screen to be plastic and "soft".
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That is an outright lie. I used glass based resistive touch screens 15 years ago in industrial applications.

If you really did work at Nokia, Nokia's demise makes sense now.
 
Surface impurities weaken the structure of glass panes, creating focal points for stresses that can cause the glass to break. Sapphire is more scratch resistant, therefore less likely to break from impact. No one has mentioned this in this entire thread.
 
skaeroastro said:
are people finally realizing here that the video of the "ultra-bendy" iPhone 6 glass part is most likely not sapphire but Gorilla Glass 3? Remember that one can't BEND a sapphire crystal. It's like saying that you can bend a diamond without it shattering o_O
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Except people have been saying this is likely sapphire blended with something else, or a thin sapphire layer + glass.

Honestly, it would make less sense for this to be Gorilla Glass 3 than sapphire, if only because of the level of production Apple has going on at the factory.
 
Go Apple! I value scratch resistance in my pocket, desk and in an accidental drop than whether I can stand on the screen.
 
LordVic said:
most current uses of Sapphire aren't even as big as a cell phone.

The current gen of phones basically only uses it for the lense of the camera and the touchID on the 5s.

Watches tend to be the biggest consumer product using Sapphire glass, and most watches aren't much bigger than 1-2" diamater of the face.

We're talknig about moving here to 4-6" worth of glass, while being only a few Milimeters thin
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Said is Tim's wonderful "it's just amazing stuff" voice. :rolleyes:
 
osaga said:
This is from Corning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv1iKi3xfb4#t=16
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I've seen that video. I also understand the science behind it. That still doesn't discount the fact that if you drop a phone the screen can crack just as easily without flaws as a screen with scratches. My phone is almost 2 years old. Drop it and a new phone and the chances are equal they both will crack.

NoNothing said:
This is 100% false. Scratches significantly weaken the glass by releasing the internal/external stresses.
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Nobody's arguing whether or not a scratch will weaken glass. Glass can and will break with with no scratches whatsoever. That's 100% fact. It happens on a daily basis. Also as it relates to phone screens, the severity and location of the scratch significantly affect the integrity of the screen when it comes to a drop. So to just state a scratch weakens it significantly is a bit of an exaggeration without qualifying the scratch. Not all scratches are the same or have the same effect.
 
What made me spit out my drink was the line from LG (formerly that not so top notch brand GOLDSTAR that had to change their name for selling junk TVs & VCRs)... "It's too expensive." 'Nuff Said. :D
 
LordVic said:
Because they use technologies that are more expensive for marketing, sales and "image" rather than what is actually best for the consumer and the device?

Unless GT AT and Apple have some secret manufacturing technique they're not sharing with anyone else in the world, the concerns that people are raising against sapphire screen for the iphone aren't unjust.
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Unlike the other companies slamming Sapphire Apple is far more secretive about things like this. So I'd take all of their criticisms about previous production of sapphire glass with a grain of salt. I really don't think Apple would have invested so much money in this thing to lose money or have something worse than Gorilla Glass. Do you?

Also there's the jealousy factor involved. Apple will likely decide who gets to buy/use this sapphire glass. They could just be pissed because they think Apple will patent lots of things that they can't use!
 
El Hikaru said:
When Steve introduced SSD, he was to charge $999 for like 60+GB. Now, SSD is everywhere.
I think my toilet window glass will be replaced with a sapphire sheet sometime in the future.
Sometime in the future.
I like the picture of the sapphire factory because it reminds me Breaking Bad.
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The original Apple hard drive (only 20KB, and attached to a serial port) cost $600. Pretty much everything associated with Apple's business tends to get better and cheaper over time.
 
huschpuscheli said:
I saw a video from GTA where they demonstrated a big machine which can produce sapphire layers which where as thin as a hair. They did this by shooting protons (?) into a sapphire block. The protons resided in a defined depth. Then they heated the block and the protons reacted with the sapphire and produced helium (or so), so that a ultra thin later separated from the block. This thin sheet then could be laminated on a cheaper glass layer. Maybe this is the way apple did it?!
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this is the video i was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLwARB1qlI4
 
We don't know what Apple has engineered using sapphire. I'm content to wait till it is released and find out. Material science these days is incredibly sophisticated. Certainly they want to take advantage of the fundamental hardness of sapphire. Certainly they have options to deal with brittleness and residual stress. Apple has access to the top scientists in universities around the world. Whatever they did it was not a rash decision.
 
Sapphire for iWatch

Seems obvious to me that the Sapphire is for the iWatch as it is commonly used on watches?

My Seiko Kinetic watch has a Sapphire front and is as good as when I bought the watch nearly 20 years ago.

Maybe it will end up in iPhones but wouldn't it be smarter to start production with a small device and then scale up once the production process is proven.
 
in old news, 64 bit cpu is a marketing gimmick too til that guy backtracked when he realized his own company were trying to get 64 bit out after Apple lol
 
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