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30 times harder than plastic

A

ashrakay

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 7, 2008
22
0
I'm a new iPhone user, but I use only Mac products. That being said, I'm not a fanboy. I'm just a designer and photographer that requires this kind of equipment for my work.

I waited 3 generations for Apple to work out its bugs and when I saw the iPhone 4, I knew it was time to buy.

Everyone has been talking about the antennae. It's pretty much been talked to death, so yeah, I have that same issue and I use a rubber bumper.

But, am I the only one that really confused about the strength of the glass? Apple writes, "Chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic..."

Okay, but I've never had any plastic item, no matter how fragile shatter when dropped. Is this not a blatant marketing deception? Can anyone tell me if they've ever dropped a plastic anything and it shattered? (permitting it had not been exposed to extremely low temperatures.

Is anyone, i.e., Consumer Reports, NYT, etc., going to call Apple out on this?
 
Now that you have, there's no need to :)

All the iPhones have had nice hard tough glass in them. To me the durability of the glass is all about scratch resistance, not drop survivability. My Blackberry 8700 was the best phone I ever had (up till then). But once I was done with it the screen was a disaster. On the other hand I could fling that sucker across the room and know it would be fine afterwards.

My 3G had a virtually crystal clear screen 2 years after I got my grubby hands on it. And I never fling my phones around anymore. :D
 
In terms of scratch-resistancy and bendability, the iPhone 4's is really that strong and stiff. Try carving something in the back of the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS with a key, then try the back of the iPhone 4.
 
spblat said:
Now that you have, there's no need to :)

All the iPhones have had nice hard tough glass in them. To me the durability of the glass is all about scratch resistance. My Blackberry 8700 was the best phone I ever had (up till then). But once I was done with it the screen was a disaster. On the other hand I could fling that sucker across the room and know it would be fine afterwards.

My 3G had a virtually crystal clear screen 2 years after I got my grubby hands on it. And I never fling my phones around anymore. :D
Click to expand...

So, you didn't get an iPhone 3GS. The fu****g oleophobic coating scratches pretty easily. I've been very careful with my iPhone 3GS and I didn't know how many hairline scratches there were in the coating until I looked at it under very bright lights. They don't even show up in the sunlight (or regular lighting). I don't think Apple has improved the coating on the iPhone 4, but it isn't that bad, it just ruins the iPhone's practically impossible-to-scratch screen characteristic. The glass still won't scratch, but the coating will most likely show scratches in particular lighting.
 
MICHAELSD said:
So, you didn't get an iPhone 3GS.
Click to expand...
Nope, but my wife did. And she has been hell on it. Drops it all the damn time. Once in the toilet. Separate story. It's true: the screen isn't immaculate, but given what it's been through I'm a happy camper.
 
Original iPhone and iPhone 3Gs work great for me.

iPhone 4 is another story in the mobile connectivity department. Just got it replaced. Will see what happens with this one.
However, iPhone 4's WiFi is much better. GPS is much faster. And various other things are improved.
 
xbuddycorex said:
Stiffer and Harder means easier to shatter. Think about it.
Click to expand...

This.

I think there is a lot of confusion over what strength, stiffness and hardness actually represent as the words are often bandied about to mean the same thing.

In simple terms:

Stiffness - resistance to bending
Strength - resistance to deformation (by extension)
Hardness - resistance to scratching
Toughness - resistance to cracking

The glass on iPhone 4 is both very hard and very stiff, but as stated, this unfortunately means that it is also brittle and so if dropped or hit with sufficient force will crack slightly more easily than a less stiff, softer material.

This doesn't mean it's bad in the slightest as, to be fair, it was never designed to be dropped. It was designed however to be scratch resistant and give a stiff chasiss (as much about giving a feeling of quality as it is about structural rigidity). In this case, the material selection is an excellent one.
 
MICHAELSD said:
So, you didn't get an iPhone 3GS. The fu****g oleophobic coating scratches pretty easily. I've been very careful with my iPhone 3GS and I didn't know how many hairline scratches there were in the coating until I looked at it under very bright lights. They don't even show up in the sunlight (or regular lighting). I don't think Apple has improved the coating on the iPhone 4, but it isn't that bad, it just ruins the iPhone's practically impossible-to-scratch screen characteristic. The glass still won't scratch, but the coating will most likely show scratches in particular lighting.
Click to expand...

Would you rather have scratch-free screen full of smudges or cleaner, far less smudgy screen with hairline scratches that don't even show up in sunlight or regular light?

The oleophobic coating is one of the best improvements of 3GS over the 3G and original iPhone IMO.
 
I think it may shatter easier due to the density of the glass.

I don't exactly remember where I read it but this guy was saying that he used to work at this watch factory and they started using (what he thinks may be) the same type of glass Apple is using. He said because it was so dense, the glass often shattered. It passed all tests, but when the dense glass hit another dense material like, glass, it would chip.
 
spblat said:
No problem. If you are the kind of person who drops stuff all the time, the iPhone (at least a naked iPhone) probably isn't for you.
Click to expand...

If you're the kind of person who drops stuff all the time, you probably should not be purchasing items that you will carry around with you that are expensive. Exactly the reason why I don't buy expensive sunglasses anymore, I misplace them too often.
 
My 2G iPhone, which I have been brutally abusing since September 2007 has only ONE scratch on its front glass. That phone has dropped from various heights on concrete, marble, wooden flooring, everywhere ... the back has also survived pretty well.

Now, if this glass was good enough, why did Apple use this new glass on the iPhone 4? What was the point?
 
sammy2066 said:
My 2G iPhone, which I have been brutally abusing since September 2007 has only ONE scratch on its front glass. That phone has dropped from various heights on concrete, marble, wooden flooring, everywhere ... the back has also survived pretty well.

Now, if this glass was good enough, why did Apple use this new glass on the iPhone 4? What was the point?
Click to expand...

You can bend it with machines without cracking it, which has a lot of use in a phone.
 
MICHAELSD said:
You can bend it with machines without cracking it, which has a lot of use in a phone.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but when its actually installed in a phone ... in what scenario could I possible bend it like they show in their promotional video?

Humans are trained to be impressed by what they see ... so sure, the resilience of that glass is excellent ... but again, in a functional phone ... that resilience is useless.

This is marketing is accurate ... but invariably misleading
 
Honestly I think the biggest cause of the glass chipping problem comes from the design; not the materials.

On the 3GS- the edge of the glass is protected by the chrome bezel which the iP4 doesn't have.

It's also likely that Apple knows this because they released bumpers to protect the fragile edges.
 
I've heard a few people have found it not as durable as 3G S or 3G. Someone at the store near me got their brand new one, walked one step out, dropped it and it shattered. 3 foot drop shouldn't make that happen...
 
strausd said:
I've heard a few people have found it not as durable as 3G S or 3G. Someone at the store near me got their brand new one, walked one step out, dropped it and it shattered. 3 foot drop shouldn't make that happen...
Click to expand...

Agreed, Apple is pure evil. Steve Jobs did this because Giz leaked the phone and wanted us to suffer.
 
Agreed

sammy2066 said:
Agreed, but when its actually installed in a phone ... in what scenario could I possible bend it like they show in their promotional video?

Humans are trained to be impressed by what they see ... so sure, the resilience of that glass is excellent ... but again, in a functional phone ... that resilience is useless.

This is marketing is accurate ... but invariably misleading
Click to expand...

Absolutely. That's all I'm saying. They could have said 30x more scratch resistant. They chose the word hard.

Someone said, "If you're the kind of person who drops stuff all the time, you probably should not be purchasing items that you will carry around with you that are expensive. " which is true of course, but what if you're the kind of person that only drops something once... and it's your iphone. :)

Really great reading these replies. Thanks to all.
 
Ps

I'm going to go try to bend my iPhone now like they did in that commercial.
 
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