I’m sure most of you are familiar with Corning’s Gorilla Glass. Many mid-end and high-end devices pack this feature in order to protect the display. Some phone brands even cover their products with glass! Today we’ll show you the pros and cons of glass smartphones.
Glass smartphones: The advantages
First of all, let’s talk about Corning’s Gorilla Glass! This kind of glass is designed to allow capacitivity (touchscreen) and protect the display of the phone at the same time. Such glass smartphones can avoid bumps and scratches. There are also many manufacturers who produce protection glass but Gorilla seems to be the most famous and trustworthy one! More than 3 billion phones in the world feature this Gorilla Glass. And I’m sure this is the main reason why glass adoption is rising so dramatically, aiming to protect not only the screen but also other parts of the phone case.
Second, glass smartphones can be produced in large scale! Glass is the material that can be produced in massive amount! Hence the manufacturers can reduce the cost of making the externals and pay more attention (and money) to the internals of the phone. Now before you are convinced by how great such phones are, please take a look at their disadvantages.
Glass smartphones: The disadvantages
First, glass smartphones are quite limited in design. While plastic and metal can be adapted to many kinds of phone cases such as curved backs, curved displays…; most of the devices with glass cover are flat. Compared to plastic and metal, glass are much less flexible. Smartphones covered with glass are also rare. Sony Xperia Z seems to be the only phone series to feature glass both on the front and on the rear!
Moreover, glass smartphones are quite fragile compared to plastic and metal smartphones. Except the Gorilla Glass, other common kinds of glass can break easily! Plastic can break too, but I’m sure it won’t shatter like glass! So smartphones with glass cover require a careful protection from their owners. But hopefully the OEMs will feature another kind of glass which is not expensive as Gorilla Glass yet survives dropping!