Motorola Droid Screen Protected By Gorilla Glass
Apparently Anthony Perez didn’t get the message: the Motorola Droid screen should be harder to break than the vast majority of phone screens because it is protected by Gorilla Glass. Now you’re wondering what the heck Gorilla Glass is… aren’t you? It’s made by Corning and essentially the glass is supercharged by dunking it in superhuman glass juice. Or more scientifically speaking:
Like many glasses used in these kinds of applications, Gorilla glass chemically strengthened. Glass is a brittle material. Brittle materials are extremely strong under compression but extremely weak under tension. When you chemically temper a glass, you immerse it in a salt bath and you stuff larger ions in all the surfaces and put them all under compression. What’s unique about Gorilla Glass is that because of its inherent composition, it can allow those larger ions to penetrate the surface more deeply to increase the compression tolerance and tolerate deeper scratches.
The compression pushes a flaw back. It’s harder to break from a deeper scratch.
And if you’re REALLY interested in how all this works, you’ll probably be entertained by the following little chart that compares Gorilla Glass and Soda Lime Glass (they should rename it Sprite Glass or 7UP glass):
I originally found this goodness over at Gizmodo where their article is titled “Why Even Clumsy People Like You Would have Trouble Breaking The Display On a Motorola Droid”. But what if you’re wearing sweatpants in your Celica and your Droid slips out of your pocket as you stand up? That, my friend, is an unfortunate problem that even Gorilla Glass could never protect against.
Like I told you before… just ask Anthony Perez.