Sapphire vs. Gorilla Glass
With sapphire glass speculation escalating as we approach the September iPhone announcement, uBreakiFix, a national smartphone and tech repair company, did some in-house testing on sapphire glass to determine just how durable it is. Their conclusion may surprise you. Though sapphire is remarkably hard, second only to diamonds in fact - it turns out that it is also remarkably stiff. A combination that makes it quite brittle, and this brittleness may equate to broken screens. Sapphire may not be the indestructible cure-all that many have claimed it is.
uBreakiFix released two separate videos detailing breaking and testing of sapphire this week. The first is an impact test on the new Kyocera Brigadier, a little known smartphone catered to adventure enthusiasts that hit U.S. markets last week. The phone is touted as nearly indestructible by Kyocera, and sports a sapphire display. "It was a great opportunity to get our hands on Sapphire in an actual Smartphone application," says David Reiff, the company's Co-Founder and Vice President. uBreakiFix tested the phone from 3ft, 4.5ft, 6ft and 8ft, and other than some scuffs on the perimeter plastic the sapphire screen remained intact. uBreakiFix claimed the phones durability was due to the raised perimeter bezel that protects the screen, not necessarily the sapphire. To prove it, they removed the display assembly from the phone and dropped it on its own. Without the protective bezel, the screen cracked with a drop from only 3ft. "Though Kyocera has built an impressively tough phone, we think the elevated screen bezel and other factors contribute to its impact durability, not necessarily the sapphire screen," claims uBreakiFix in the drop test video.
In a follow up video that was a bit more thorough, the company stress tested multiple samples of sapphire and Gorilla Glass in a bend fixture. The video gets a bit technical, but the result seems to support the conclusion that sapphire is not a more impact durable material than typically used smartphone glass, though it is certainly harder. In a scratch test using a tungsten carbide scratching mechanism, sapphire was unaffected while gorilla glass and tempered glass suffered deep, visible gashes. In a bending test, uBreakiFix showed that though failure strength of the sapphire is about 25% higher than glass, it's unable to bend and absorb impact, which could mean impact cracks and shatters. uBreakiFix was quick to point out that this does not necessarily mean a more fragile iPhone 6. "Our conclusion is that sapphire alone will not equate to an unbreakable iPhone, in fact the brittleness of sapphire glass poses significant problems for engineers to overcome, and we have serious doubts that it will outperform Gorilla Glass. But, we can't say if an iPhone 6 with a sapphire screen will be more or less durable overall. Clever engineering and protective features may still create a very durable device regardless of the use of sapphire," finished Reiff.
