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Your next smartphone will be a lot harder to scratch:
It takes about two years for Corning to develop each new generation of Gorilla Glass, the resilient material that graces a critical mass of smartphones. That process has for several update cycles focused on protecting screens against drops, fending off shatters and cracks by boosting what's known as compressive strength. The newly announced Gorilla Glass Victus, though, gives equal weight to preventing scratches. That's harder than it sounds and more useful than you'd think.
[...] There's also the fact that making glass that's both scratch and drop resistant is, well, hard. The manufacture of glass is often a game of compromise, which you can see most clearly in the quest for durable foldable phones: the stronger it is, the less it can bend. In this case, getting those two properties to play nice is less a direct contradiction than it is a process of reinvention.
Phone screens had previously been designed to resist drops, but with consumers upgrading their phones less frequently scratch-resistance has grown in importance.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 26 2020, @05:31PM (2 children)
I have noticed that Made-in-China-for-China phones seem to scratch super easily - perhaps because they are aiming for a 6-12 month replacement cycle?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @07:17AM
It's more likely because people move manufacturing to China to save money. Unless they opt to do the QA and pay for high quality components.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2020, @08:14PM
I presume you mean the cheap ones made by lesser known Chinese brands? In that case it is probably just cost cutting. My Xiaomi Mi 9T doesn't seem particularly prone to scratches. After about 9 months use without a screen protector, it doesn't have any scratches that are noticeable in use (there are some small ones, but you have to look pretty closely with the screen off to see them).