New version of Gorilla Glass is out

Glass 5 can survive a fall 80 per cent of the time

Corning has just released a new version of its Gorilla Glass which it says can handle a drop onto rough surfaces 80 per cent of the time

Gorilla Glass 5 which is the imaginatively titled replacement for Gorilla Glass 4, is supposed to be “up to 4X better in drop failure height than competitive glasses.” While this might sound good, rival glass is thin on the ground with most of the rivals pushed out of the market for a while now.

Corning says shattered screens are the “consumers’ No. 1 issue” with mobile devices. It cites a recent study saying “85 percent of smartphone owners have dropped their phones at least once per year and 55 percent have dropped their phones three times or more.”

Gorilla Glass 5 is commercially available now and we should see devices from “leading global brands” later this year. Our guess is that it will be in the new batch of flagship phones.