Archive for January 21st, 2011

Are Dragons tougher than Gorillas?

By now, most of us have heard of Gorilla Glass, the tough glass that’s to be found on a variety of portably devices now, notably the Dell Streak. Certainly the benefits of Gorilla Glass are widely acclaimed with numerous demonstrations of its properties on YouTube where the brave tackle screens with keys, scissors and even knives. No damage evident.

However, there’s new contender out there. One of Japan’s largest glass manufacturers has been showing off a new glass designed for mobile devices that is claimed to be considerably tougher and stronger than conventional glass and even better than Gorilla Glass.

Asahi Glass said its ‘Dragontrail’ glass is about six times as tough as typical chemically-treated soda lime glass and should be better suited to the rough-and-tumble life to which portable gadgets are subjected.

Gorilla Glass vs Dragontrail

At a recent press conference in Tokyo reporters were invited try it from themselves and try scratching the glass with their keys. Despite the enthusiastic efforts of those that tried, the screen remained undamaged even after it was dropped it remained un broken. (Watch the video on YouTube.)

The company also showed videos of tests it had done on the glass. It bent but didn’t break under 60kgs of weight and resisted the shock of a hammer strike in the videos.

The glass will go up against Corning’s Gorilla glass, which boasts similar properties and has proved a hit with portable gadget makers. It’s already used in more than 225 mobile devices including cell phones, laptop and tablet PCs, and was recently selected by Sony for the front glass for its flat-panel LCD TVs, said Corning.

Asahi Glass has been developing Dragontrail for the last two years and the company has already begun supplying it to some electronics makers, but delayed its disclosure until Thursday. It declined to identify its customers.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the two shape up when the go head-to-head, I’m hoping that the glass starts the become more common place and on larger products, glass is far easier to clean and look after than plastic!

Posted by: Matt