[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSn-ezky5Zo[/youtube]
Gorilla Glass is a very resistant material that is currently used for the screens of quite popular smartphones and it was rumored that the iPhone 4 screen would be manufactured using the same technology or a similar one that offers the same degree of resistance. Practically every touchscreen smartphone has such a hard material above the digitizer that protects the screen and the digitizer against bumps/scratches/etc. Gorilla glass, as you can see in the video, is much more durable than the materials normally used for smartphone screens, in fact it is so durable that it takes a lot of force to crack it.
The test screen from video lesson it was only 1.1mm thick, so you can imagine how resistant this material is if it couldn't be cracked even though 2 people pressed with all their strength in its center. Gorilla Glass is manufactured through a patented technological process that makes this material probably one of the most resistant in the world, at least if we are talking about smartphone screens:
What Gorilla Glass is is an Alkalide Lumina Silicone glass – which essentially means it has sodium in it. The way the glass is made strong is that they put in a hot salt bath, which leaches out the sodium, which they then replace with Potassium. Potassium, being a bigger molecule than sodium, sets up a compressive layer on the surface when the glass cools. That compressive layer is what makes the glass damage resistant.
To be honest, I would like to see an iPhone that has such a resistant screen and I say this because the iPhone 4 is so fragile that it can be cracked at almost any position.
