Your next Samsung Galaxy or iPhone will soon include the toughest device glass Corning has ever created. Today, the company announces Gorilla Glass Victus – a glass that can not only withstand a six-foot drop, but is also the first in six years to significantly improve your phone’s ability to avoid nasty scratches.
It’s a little-known fact that Corning’s Gorilla Glass hasn’t improved much in key and coin resistance since 2014’s Gorilla Glass 3, and has possibly gotten a bit worse since then: our reports showed that Gorilla Glass 4 actually it performed worse in some tests, Gorilla Glass 5 was in the middle, and Gorilla Glass 6 didn’t improve any further as Corning was more focused on making his phone survive a nasty crash.
But Corning claims that the new Victus glass, no Gorilla Glass 7, only Victus, can do both drop and scratch resistance simultaneously, with no known offsets. The company says it has twice the scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass 6, four times the resistance of competing glass, and a representative fake Victus-coated phone can survive up to a drop of up to 2 meters (6.5 feet).
That resistance to falling is nothing to sneeze at; It is a foot and a quarter higher than Corning cited for Gorilla Glass 6 (1.6m or 5.25ft) or 1.2m (3.9ft) that the company claimed Gorilla Glass 5 was capable of. Theoretically, we’ve gone from shoulder-height to head-height survival in just four years, which is good news if you ever feel like holding the phone close to your ear. People still do that, right?
Corning says that repeated fall resistance has also improved, surviving 20 1-meter falls on average. With Gorilla Glass 6, the company claimed that it generally survived 15 drops from that same height.
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But you should probably know that the resistance to drops and scratches can vary greatly depending on how he drops or scratches his phone, and Corning doesn’t pretend he has a magic bullet there. Corning Vice President and Gorilla Glass Chief Scientist Jaymin Amin sincerely admits that Victus is not pocket proof when asked if pieces of dirt, sand, metal, and other materials that can get in keys and coins could cause a scratch. “I think those warnings would still apply to any glassware,” says Amin, “but what this does for you is reduce those instances quite dramatically.”
It may also depend on the manufacturer. Amin says that at least one manufacturer realized that Victus is much better than Gorilla Glass 6 who is choosing to put a thinner layer of the new glass on their device instead of maximizing durability. Similarly, one of Corning’s marketing videos suggests that “Victus is so good that if you used it on phones designed just three or four years ago, it would be difficult to break them in a daily crash event,” but the phones were thicker three years ago, so you probably shouldn’t count on that.
The only thing that probably can I’m counting on the next wave of premium phones to include the new Corning crystal. Samsung will be the first to introduce Victus with a product that will arrive “in the coming months,” and many other OEMs are also designing it on flagship phones. Gorilla Glass, in general, has been an industry standard for years, from the “Hail Mary” work that made it the glass chosen by Apple for iPhone, iPad, and more. (Other manufacturers are trying to get closer.)
Apparently, Victus won’t cost more to adopt, either. While Corning definitely hints that the new glass will come at a higher price, the company says it will eventually match manufacturers, as the improved scratch resistance means they will have to throw away fewer scratched displays at the factory. It appears they are not transferring those savings yet.
I am a little sad because I bought an iPhone 11 Pro instead of waiting a little longer. I scratched it the first week and I have no idea how. I never put anything else in that pocket.
Update, 11:00 am ET: He added that Victus survives more repeated falls, on average, too.
