Corning has long been the industry standard supplier of display protection technology. Today, it announced its next flagship offering for smartphones—Gorilla Glass Victus.
Ever since its inception, more than 8 billion devices spanning over 45 manufacturers have opted for Gorilla Glass protection. The portfolio even includes tablets, laptops and wearables. Corning’s internal surveys suggest that consumers prioritise durability over screen size, camera quality and device thinness. With these in mind, the Gorilla Glass Victus was developed.
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For the first time ever in the Gorilla Glass family, both drop and scratch performance have been improved. In fact, it is supposed to bring 2x improvement in scratch resistance over the Gorilla Glass 6. In lab tests, Victus was able to survive drops from a height of 2 metres on rough, hard surfaces. The same structural integrity can also be brought to curved displays and was one of the aspects that was kept in mind in the development process.
Interestingly, it doesn't come with any major weight or volume implications for OEMs. It will also eventually make its way to wearables and other form factors such as tablets and laptops.
While the last generation improved on drop protection massively, over time, the phones showed more visible scratches. That was one of the focus points that drove the development of Gorilla Glass Victus. “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”, said John Bayne, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile Consumer Electronics, Corning.
Corning tells us that this new approach was also the reason why they decided to not just call it Gorilla Glass 7, as the improvements were not just iterative. Victus, which means ‘survivor’ in Latin, signifies the start of something much bigger and better. This doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't return to a number-based naming scheme in the future.
Gorilla Glass Victus will make its commercial debut on an upcoming Samsung smartphone in the near future. We expect it to be the Galaxy Note 20 series which are slated to launch on August 5.
