You Keep Dropping Your Phone, So Gorilla Glass Had To Get Better

It's been a couple of years since we've seen a new version of Gorilla Glass, but today, Corning announced just that. Corning has revealed Gorilla Glass Victus, a new type of strengthened glass for smartphones that should (hopefully) be better at preventing scratches and damage. For what it's worth, Corning says that Victus is the strongest Gorilla Glass it's manufactured yet.

"Dropped phones can result in broken phones, but as we developed better glasses, phones survived more drops but also showed more visible scratches, which can impact the usability of devices," said John Bayne, SVP and general manager of mobile consumer electronics for Corning in today's announcement. "Instead of our historic approach of asking our technologists to focus on a single goal – making the glass better for either drop or scratch – we asked them to focus on improving both drop and scratch, and they delivered with Gorilla Glass Victus."

So, how much better is it? According to Corning's own metrics, Gorilla Glass Victus "achieved drop performance up to 2 meters when dropped onto hard, rough surfaces." While "drop performance" is a somewhat nebulous term, it seems safe to assume that Corning is talking about durability in regards to cracks and shattering here. The company says that competing strengthened glass "typically fail" around a height of 0.8 meters.

As far as scratches are concerned, Corning says that Victus offers "up to a 2x improvement in scratch resistance" over Gorilla Glass 6 – introduced in 2018 and the current flagship Gorilla Glass – while performing up to 4x better than strengthened glass from competitors.

Obviously, your mileage will vary, and though Corning makes some impressive claims in its announcement today, we wouldn't go hurling phones across the room just because they're outfitted with Gorilla Glass Victus. Corning says that Samsung will be the first customer to use Victus "in the near future," which suggests that we might see this new glass on the next Galaxy Note. Stay tuned for more.