Does Gorilla Glass need a Screen Protector?

In order to answer this let’s begin by contextualising the products in question; Gorilla Glass and  screen protectors.

Manufactured by American multinational technology company – Corning, Gorilla Glass is a brand of chemically strengthened glass, now in its sixth generation. The glass is designed to be thin, light and damage resistant making it ideal for smart phone manufacturers to utilise as their display. Screen protectors on the other hand are made from a thin adhesive plastic film that goes right on top of your phone screen giving it added surface protection and scratch resistance.

Fun fact about screen protectors? the first one was designed and patented by Herbert Schlegel in 1968 for usage on a television screen.    

Simply improving phone specifications to enhance processing speeds, data security and picture quality become irrelevant if your hardware gets compromised. This is why display protection is considered a priority by smart phone research and development teams. In addition to this, both demands by the market for display glass that do not scratch or crack plus existing properties of glass itself, are responsible for the currently available screen protection solutions.

Crux of the problem? scratch resistant screens crack and crack resistant screens scratch.

Electronic device production firms struggle to deliver both within the same product. It’s either one or the other. Plus, Corning has to cater to a number of smart phone original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who progressively demand that each glass be thinner than its predecessor. A decision had to be made in this regard; and as such Gorilla Glass was fabricated to compromise on scratch resistance, and deliver on thinness.          

Corning’s vice president of Gorilla Glass; John Bayne, was quoted saying that “the number one pain point for consumers is still broken devices, so we have prioritized drop with recent generation of Gorilla Glass.”  Bottom line is, Gorilla Glass is highly prone to sustaining scratches and retaining scuff marks. The screen despite being more immune to shattering still does not guarantee against abrasion. In an attempt to overcome this, they did however take several steps towards increasing the scratch resistance of their product by subjecting each successive generation of Gorilla Glass to a number of rigorous tests.

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