Recently there has been lots of talk about sapphire glass, and how it is could produce an unbreakable iPhone screen.
In 2013 Apple spend nearly $600 Million dollars investing in a company that produces this sapphire glass. Everyone hoped to see this new sapphire glass on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+, but that did not happen.
You may be asking, why would Apple spend that amount of money and not fit their new line of iPhones with the sapphire glass screens. Your guess is as good as ours, but we have 3 ideas why we think they haven’t yet included sapphire screens on the iPhone.
When thin, sapphire glass is not strong
Currently sapphire glass is used to produce such things as barcode scanners and high-end watches. It’s the thickness of the glass that gives sapphire glass its “unbreakable” qualities. Currently iPhone screen glass is extremely thin and if fitted with sapphire glass, it would be more breakable than the current gorilla glass that is used with the iPhone.
Sapphire glass is Heavy
When compared to Gorilla Glass (the current glass used for the iPhone), sapphire glass is 60% heavier. In a day an age where phones are getting thinner a lighter, it doesn’t make much sense to switch to a thicker heavier glass.
It is expensive
Sapphire glass is much more expensive than the glass used on todays smartphones. It is estimated that sapphire cost 10 times the amount than the current iPhone Gorilla Glass.
We may never see a day in which sapphire glass is used on a cellphone touchscreen. We do think that Apple invested in sapphire to use on their upcoming “Apple Watch”. Using sapphire glass on the Apple watch would be a much better use fix for this type of glass technology.
