Help Keep Your Gear Safe with Gorilla Glass
While we all tend to focus on our gear specific to our activities such as a carbon bike frame, a titanium coffee cup, an ultra-light waterproof shell, a running shoe with zero drop, and the such, there is one product that we take with us on almost all of our adventures, our phones. When shopping for a new phone, we look for features such as a good camera, phone size, battery life, and computing platform, but we often overlook one important feature, screen durability. Gorilla Glass by Corning is an extremely durable glass that found in a number of phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices that we often take for granted, but it’s an important feature to look for when you’re making your next purchase.
Glass Durability
Whether I’m out for a trail run, a ski tour, a mountain bike or road ride, a hike, or a backpacking trip, I almost always have my cell/smart phone with me. As we all know, phones are much more than a two way communication device these days. When out on my adventures, I usually like to have my phone with me to take photos, check maps, track my miles, and post from time to time on my social media channels. With that said, having a device that is durable and that I can depend on is extremely important. When we think of what’s durable on your phone, the last thing you think about is usually the screen. This however depends if you’re using a phone with Corning® Gorilla® Glass.
While Corning who has long been known for popular products such as CorningWare, the company has been flying below the radar developing glass screens for many of our electronics. As we all know, there are a number of phone manufactures out there that make hundreds of phone models to choose from. To start, let me tell you that not all phones and the screens are made equal. One of the recent tools I came across is a web page by Corning to help you determine whether a device uses Gorilla Glass. To find out whether your phone is made with Gorilla Glass, check out the following link.
As someone who is hard on my gear, I have a deep appreciation for products that can withstand drops, falls, bumps, scrapes, and dings. Gorilla Glass uses a chemical makeup that is used on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more which helps to prevent your screen from getting scratched and cracked. The actual process of the glass making is a little complicated, but fortunately for us Corning has put together an easy to understand video to help us better know how it all works.
In my experience with Gorilla Glass, I’ve been surprised and happy with the durability of my glass on my Samsung Galaxy S5 which uses Gorilla Glass 3 with NDR. I’ve been using this phone for over four months with no case and the last two months with a case by Otterbox. I’ve dropped the phone on pavement and dirt, sat on it, and threw it in the bottom of my pack while hiking, skiing, and trail running. After all that, you assume there would be some scratches and possibly cracks on the screen, but I am happy to report back the phone’s glass surface looks like the day I took it out of the box. Compared to past phones without Gorilla Glass, I can say there is a night and day difference between a phone with and without Gorilla Glass.
Corning Gorilla Glass 4
New for 2015, Corning has introduced Gorilla Glass 4 into new tech devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Acer Iconia Tab 10 Tablet. Gorilla Glass 4 takes durability one step further than its predecessor Gorilla Glass 3 by improving damage resitance. What this means is that electronics manufactures can create slimmer, sleeker devices without sacrificing durability.
Final Thoughts
As someone who loves a piece of gear that can hold up to daily life happenings as well as more extreme adventures, I have a new found appreciation for what our friends over at Corning are doing with Gorilla Glass. I have often taken for granted screen durability, but it is evident to me now that there is a lot of technology that is being created behind the scenes to make our lives more enjoyable. So the next time you’re in the market for a new phone, tablet, or laptop, be sure to check and see if the screen uses Gorilla Glass.
Corning Incorporated sponsored this blog post. The opinions and text are all mine.
