Corning’s Gorilla Glass products may soon be a thing of the past, at least when it comes to the very high end of the smartphone market. This could happen thanks to Kyocera, which Sapphire Shield glass may turn into a new darling of top handset makers (and owners of said devices).
While Corning has made significant progress during the years to make its Gorilla Glass tougher, it can’t beat sapphire glass, which as far we know may end-up being used by Apple for the next generation of iPhones. At the moment, this tough though expensive material is used only on devices made for the super-rich with the likes of Gresso and Vertu relying on sapphire glass to protect screens of their products. Apple on its end have used it to cover the camera hole as well as for the home / Touch ID button.
Back to Kyocera’s solution. It is apparently “coming soon,” though it’s not clear which vendors will sign-up to use it in their phones. Chances are we’ll have a new, even more rugged Kyocera smartphone released by year’s end, but what we really want is to see HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola and LG joining the party, and use this material in their next-gen flagship devices.
The sapphire glass is virtually indestructible and is thus also well-suited for wearable devices. In fact, some of the most expensive watches are already relying on this material, and we would guess Kyocera wants a piece of the fast-growing smart watch market, as well.
Presuming the Japanese company manages to pull this off — and make its Sapphire Shield available in decent quantities — we expect to see Corning’s Gorilla Glass products moving from high- to mid- and low-end smartphones. I say that’s a good thing, cause what we ultimately want are phones that are extremely tough to break, right?
[Via: AndroidCentral]