4 ms·
It does, on the front and back [1]. I took a set of keys, a fork and a pocket knife to the front and back glass panels of the Nexus 4 and couldn't get a scratc
by prawks 14y ago
It does, on the front and back [1].
I took a set of keys, a fork and a pocket knife to the front and back glass panels of the Nexus 4 and couldn't get a scratch to show up anywhere. I also slipped and dropped the phone while pulling it out of my pocket this week, and it showed no signs of my fumble.
Until I see a video, I'm not really convinced, tbh. If he has a granite counter-top, and didn't set it down as gently as the author claims, it's completely probable that it cracked. People are incredibly clumsy with phones. Glass doesn't exactly have a high thermal conductivity (nor does granite/linoleum/plastic), I find it difficult to believe the glass would expand/contract enough from body heat/kitchen counter-tops.
[1] http://www.wired.com/reviews/2012/11/google-nexus-4/ http://www.wired.com/reviews/2012/11/google-nexus-4/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kragen 14y agoYour comment is wrong from beginning to end. Normal window glass is Mohs hardness 5.5 or so, as is unhardened steel (your fork and pocketknife); hardened steel (e.g. a metal file) is more like 6.5. That means you can scratch regular steel with glass and vice versa, with some difficulty. (Try it. I just did.) Brass (your key) is around 3 or 4, so it won't scratch glass. There are lots of things with Mohs hardness above 5.5, including most common metals (except brass, aluminum, copper) and most rocks. Sand is almost never made up of glass particles. It's often made up of crystalline quartz (Mohs hardness 7) which can scratch regular glass easily. Gorilla Glass has Mohs hardness of about 9, so quartz won't scratch it.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoDeleted. Thanks for making your comment standalone so nobody else has to waste their time reading mine.
- kragen 14y agoI'm glad it is helpful!
- Osmium 14y agoNotable, then, is the fact that Apple felt the need to make their lens covers out of sapphire (Mohs hardness of 9). If they were using Gorilla glass on the back, and it has the hardness you claim, then surely that isn't necessary?
- ktsmith 14y agoOptical sapphire has different properties than gorilla glass. There can be reasons other than hardness for using a material as a lens cover.
- Osmium 14y agoAgreed; but Apple did state specifically that they were using it because it was more durable. In regards to optical properties, some people are speculating the sapphire is the cause of the iPhone 5's worse susceptibility to lens flare.
- kragen 14y agoI have no idea if Apple was using Gorilla Glass on the back, nor did I know whether GG is harder or softer than sapphire. I'd assume softer, since it's just a glass, right? http://www.corning.com/docs/specialtymaterials/pisheets/PI2317.pdf http://www.corning.com/docs/specialtymaterials/pisheets/PI23... gives its Vickers hardness as 701 kgf/mm^2, which http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness#Hardness_.28Vickers.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness#... would seem to place in the 5-6.5 range of the Mohs scale, nowhere close to 9. However, Vickers is a scale of resistance to plastic deformation, while Mohs is a (highly nonlinear!) scale of resistance to abrasion, so perhaps take that with a gram of potassium chloride. Other random places suggest sapphire's Vickers hardness is around 1800-2200 kgf/mm^2, which is substantially harder than the number Corning's brochure gives for Gorilla Glass.
- smacktoward 14y agoPeople are incredibly clumsy with phones. Which seems like a pretty good argument for not wrapping them in glass. Too often in technology we build things that are fragile, and then blame the user when she breaks them. Tools should be designed to work with the user as they are, rather than as we would wish them to be.