Gorilla Glass 5 protects your smartphone from bigger drops

Corning has been refining Gorilla Glass for years and its latest iteration is the toughest yet. The glass-making company is now showing off Gorilla Glass 5, which aims to protect smartphones from damage when landing on rough surfaces as high as 1.6 meters, or somewhere between average waist and shoulder height.

Gorilla Glass 5 currently survives drops of 1.6 meters 80 percent of the time, which is a pretty high success rate. This is also a boost from 2014’s Gorilla Glass 4, which could survive drops on to rough surfaces but only from around one meter high.

According to The Verge, a Corning internal report showed that around 85 percent of smartphone owners have dropped their phone at least once in the last 12 months. Two thirds of those drops happened around waist to shoulder height, so Gorilla Glass 5 stands a good chance of lessening smartphone damage for a lot of users.

It is worth noting that the 80 percent survival tests were conducted using 0.6mm glass, but Corning does make Gorilla Glass as thin as 0.4mm, which would make it a bit weaker. If a smartphone maker opts for the thinner glass, it will be more prone to shattering, compared to the slightly thicker variant.

Gorilla Glass 5 is now in production, so we may see companies like Samsung, HTC, LG and Huawei opt to use it on future smartphones.

KitGuru Says: I have seen many smartphone displays shatter as the result of one unlucky drop. Over the years though, it seems to have become less of an issue. Still, it is great to see Corning continuing to refine its Gorilla Glass to help strengthen smartphone screens even further. Have any of you suffered a bad smartphone drop recently?

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