Why Smartphone Glass Claims Are Often Misleading

This phone is four times more shatter resistant than its predecessor. And then the next year, the phone is three times more scratch resistant than the year before. And then the next year, this phone is three times more shatter resistant again. Every year there's some line like this in a smartphone keynote. And like many things smartphone companies say on stage, this isn't a lie, but it is misleading at best because shatter resistance and scratch resistance are inversely related. Meaning they're working against each other. So to put it simply, it's like a slider or two sliders, I guess. If you want a material to be more scratch resistant, you can make it harder, but that also makes it more brittle and more

susceptible to shattering. So, if you want it to be less brittle and susceptible to shattering, you make it softer, which means it's more susceptible to scratches. So, you can pick one that you want to optimize for, but it's essentially impossible to dramatically improve both at the same time. So, when you see some keynote slide or some ad or web page or something that says this new phone is three to four times more shatter resistant than before, it sounds really dramatic and they're probably not lying, but one, they're never really required to explain what three to four times more shatter resistant actually means. But then two, the subtext is that it's most likely also quite a bit softer to make that happen and therefore less scratch

resistant or vice versa. But it's no accident that they're able to stack headlines like this. More scratch resistant, more drop resistant, more scratch resistant, more drop resistant because they're alternating. Most modern high-end smartphone these days don't make their own glass. They use a product called Gorilla Glass from a company called Corning. So Gorilla Glass 1 was first used in the original iPhone back in 2007, and now it's on its ninth generation. So, I went back and looked through all the claims that Gorilla Glass has been making for the improvements year-over-year. It's been on their website. It's been in their info sheets. And surprise, surprise, it's been essentially alternating between big improvements in shatter

resistance and big improvements in scratch resistance the entire time. So, while we just read headlines over and over that would have us believing the improvement is trending like this, the truth is there's actually two curves. There's the scratch resistance and the shatter resistance. And they're alternating improving like this. It is very clever. And yes, they're doing a lot of other work with the chemistry and lots of other factors, but that's why it's still scratches at a level six with deeper grooves at a level seven because it's still glass. The dust and sand in your pocket is often sand, which is still quartz, which is harder than glass, and so it still cuts scratches in

the glass on the phone every time. And no glass is immune to it yet. And this isn't just Gorilla Glass, by the way. I can already hear some of the comments down below already were typing about how ceramic shield on the iPhone is on some other level that got introduced in its first generation with the iPhone 12. And ceramic shield is good, but it's also not invincible. And there's also no coincidence that the first generation of ceramic shield was four times more shatterproof than previous glass. And then ceramic shield 2, which came with the iPhone 17, is, you guessed it, three times more scratch resistant. I wonder why. And it's funny, there are even independent tests on YouTube where

people go out and drop iPhones in a scientific way as they possibly can to try to verify Apple's claim of it being four times more shatter resistant with the iPhone 12. And believe it or not, the tests actually often do verify this. They'll find that the iPhone does break less often in a fall. But attributing this all to the glass would be silly. There's lots of other factors that make just as much, if not more of a difference to whether or not your phone screen will shatter on a drop. Things like the shape of the display and the thickness and material of the bezels and whether the edges are flat or curved.

The iPhone 12, you might remember, famously returned back to the square sides, where the iPhone 11 was much more rounded. And there's no question this had a huge impact on how likely it was to shatter or not. But Apple gets to loop all of that into their four times better shatter resistance claim. No asterisks, no explanation, no nothing. And honestly, there are so many other little interesting things about the glass that don't make the headlines, like the coating on the glass that's olophobic and rejects fingerprints and glides a little bit better, which is super interesting, or even reflects less. So, the anti-reflective coating. So, next time you see a claim or some

keynote slide that this new phone glass is three times as scratch resistant or twice as shatterproof on a drop, just remember that glass is still glass. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.