Humans are prone to make mistakes either due to carelessness or sometimes just pure bad luck, we are lucky that we now have at least some kind of protection, thanks to nature and specifically in this case, thanks to gorillas.
Gorilla Glass is the registered trademark for an alkali-aluminosilicate sheet toughened glass manufactured by U.S. glassmaker Corning Inc. It stands up to abuse with scratch and impact-resistant qualities. Since the technology is so advanced now, the glass is incredibly thin so that it won't interfere with capacitance touch screens or adding significant weight to the device.
The Gorilla Glass are able to withstand greater compression than standard glass, which means you have to press it (or drop it) harder to damage it. What makes it so special is a production process that involves incredible temperatures, a special trough, robots and a molten salt bath. The final product is a thin piece of glass that can withstand a lot of punishment.
So when did all of this get started? Corning had actually begun a project in 1960 and it was then called Chemcor glass. But it was then mainly used in automotive and aviation industry to minimize a vehicle’s weight but still providing the necessary protection.
Since then, it is now mainly used in portable devices market as of 2010, Gorilla Glass was being used in approximately 20% of devices worldwide or about 200 million units. The second generation, called Gorilla Glass 2 was introduced in 2012 and as of October 24, 2012, is being used by over a billion devices. The second generation was 20% thinner than the original Gorilla Glass.
And in 2013, Gorilla Glass 3 was born. It now includes Native Damage Resistance (NDR) technology which is up to three times more damage resistant than Gorilla Glass 2 and is claimed to be 40% more scratch-resistant.
There are countless videos of experiments being done to demonstrate how tough the latest Gorilla Glass 3 is. This includes your typical daily routine like accidentally dropping the phone over your coffee table or from the pocket of your pants while standing up; to the very extreme like running over the phone with your car, smashing it with hammer, well you get the idea.
Thanks to Gorilla Glass, we can now have a peace of mind while handling our precious devices. At least we can count on some added protection in case of any untoward incident or else the cost of replacing a cracked screen could amount to getting yourself a new phone. But that doesn’t mean that it is perfect because prevention is always better than cure.
