Gorilla Glass 5 can handle rough smartphone drop

Glassmaker Corning's new Gorilla Glass 5 -- the chemically strengthened super glass that several consumer electronics makers use in their devices -- survives up to 80 per cent of the time when dropped from a height of 1.6 metres.

The new glass is formulated to improve drop performance from gadgets that are dropped on to rough surfaces from certain heights -- specifically, waist height to shoulder height, The Verge reported.

The new glass is the successor to Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which was introduced in 2014.

Gorilla Glass 4 was said to be twice as tough as the previous version of its glass and twice as likely to survive drops onto uneven surfaces -- but only from about a metre high.

"What will define the performance of the overall device on those types of corner drops is stiffness of the phone design, but also how the glass is packaged. Much of this is dependent on what's known as the 'proudness' of the glass, which refers to how high above the phone the glass sits," The Verge quoted John Bayne, Corning's Vice President and General Manager, as saying.

"If it sits up really high, we call that a proud design. If it is protected by the bezel of the design then, it is not proud," added Bayne.

Gorilla Glass first started showing up in consumer electronics devices in 2007.

Since then, the company has iterated on the glass to improve overall durability and scratch-resistance while also making it thinner.

Corning says 4.5 billion device units have been shipped with its glass to date.

Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, Lenovo, Huawei, LG, HP and Asus have made devices using Corning Glass, along with other unnamed device makers.

--IANS

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