Tech companies make bold claims yearly about their latest flagships being much tougher. However, many premium phones scratch and crack just as easily as cheaper ones. Why is that?
Why Glass on Flagships Isn’t Tougher Than on Cheaper Models
If you’re spending close to a thousand bucks on a phone, you want the reassurance that it will not only survive wear and tear but also continue to look brand new for a long period of time. After all, part of what you’re paying for is the extra durability—in theory, at least.
In reality, the glass on flagship phones isn’t significantly stronger than the glass on cheaper ones. you may easily find phones that offer the same level of protection for less than half the price.
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Case in point, the $499 Galaxy A56 comes with Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front and back, the same glass used on the $1199 former flagship S22 Ultra.
This is because there’s an inverse relationship between scratch resistance and crack resistance, since the former is a result of hardness while the latter is of flexibility. You can’t make a sheet of glass more bendable and tougher at the same time.
Think about it: if that were possible, people wouldn’tavoid buying foldable phones. But they do because their biggest flaw is the delicate inner screen made of ultra-thin glass and plastic.
In other words, if Corning wants to make its Gorilla Glass more scratch-proof, the company inevitably has to sacrifice some of its crack resistance, and vice versa. And Corning, as a principle, prioritizes drop resistance over scratch resistance.
The idea is that a crack is much more damaging and can render the device unusable, whereas a scratch likely won’t ruin the functionality of the screen. That’s something I can totally agree with.
Of course, a flagship is valuable in far more ways than just the claimed toughness. However, if durability is one of the main reasons you’re buying one, you may want to reconsider. No matter how expensive your phone is, it will still scratch at level six with deeper, more noticeable grooves at level seven on the Mohs scale of hardness.
