What is Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus?

Corning has done away with its numerical naming system and instead named the latest iteration of its aluminosilicate glass ‘Victus’. (Image: Corning)
Corning revealed its next generation of aluminosilicate glass, called Gorilla Glass Victus on Friday. The company claims that Victus provides significantly better drop and scratch performance when compared to aluminosilicate glasses from other manufacturers.

Corning further explains that n lab tests Gorilla Glass Victus was able to achieve a drop performance up to 2 meters on hard, rough surfaces. Aluminosilicate glasses in comparison usually fail when dropped from less than 0.8 meters, the company claims. The Gorilla Glass Victus is also said to surpass Gorilla Glass 6 in terms of durability.

Corning states that Victus is two times more scratch-resistant than Gorilla Glass 6 and up to four times scratch-resistant than competitors.

According to research done by Corning in the three largest smartphone markets in the world (China, India and the United States) it has been discovered that durability is one of the most important purchase considerations for smartphones, second only to the device brand. The research found that consumers are willing to pay a premium for improved durability. In the research, durability has been rated twice as important when stacked against features like screen size, camera quality and device thinness.

What is Gorilla Glass Victus? How its different from previous-gen?

Corning has done away with its numerical naming system and instead named the latest iteration of its aluminosilicate glass ‘Victus’. It claims that with Victus it has improved the resistance to scratching and falling onto hard surfaces.

Also Read: Corning working on flexible Gorilla glass for foldable phones

The company has lab tested the Gorilla Glass Victus for taking falls from 6.5 feet straight onto hard and rough concrete. To recall, Gorilla Glass 5 had 80 per cent survival chances on taking a drop from 1.6 metres. Gorilla Glass 6 was also rated for 1.6 meters, it just had an improved drop survival rate.
Gorilla Glass Victus can be dropped from heights of 6.5 feet straight onto hard and rough concrete without breaking. (Image: Corning)
John Bayne, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile Consumer Electronics said, “Dropped phones can result in broken phones, but as we developed better glasses, phones survived more drops but also showed more visible scratches, which can impact the usability of devices.” “Instead of our historic approach of asking our technologists to focus on a single goal – making the glass better for either drop or scratch – we asked them to focus on improving both drop and scratch, and they delivered with Gorilla Glass Victus,” he added.

To achieve this performance, Corning tried out over 1,000 alchemists to make improvements to the glass. Due to which they were able to achieve a score of 8 Newton load in the Knoop hardness test, in which the company measures the force applied to scratch using a diamond. Now to provide you with a reference, most aluminosilicate glasses and previous generation Gorilla Glass scratch between 2-4 Newton load.

Apart from scratch resistance, Corning claims to have increased the impact resistance by 25 per cent when compared to Gorilla Glass 6. All tests done by Corning are at a set level of thickness, however, it told Android Authority that a partner is looking at “how thin it can make Victus while still offering competitive levels of strength and scratch resistance.” This means that manufacturers may thin down Victus to a point where it is only able to provide Gorilla Glass 6-levels of strength.
Gorilla Glass Victus scratches at around 8 Newton load in the Knoop hardness test. (Image: Corning)
Corning said that to manufacture the Gorilla Glass Victus they were not required to change the process significantly like they have had to do before. They just had to make a few minor tweaks to the process. Due to which, it has been able to manufacture the glass at no extra costs.

Due to the improved scratch-resistance of the Victus, it will be much more difficult to shatter considering the fact that if a glass develops faults like scratches, it tends to break much more easily.

Sapphire is a strong alternative that manufacturers can use. However, it is relatively thick and brittle. Sapphire due to its synthetic crystalline structure scratches at about two Newtons of force in the Knoop test.

When can you experience Gorilla Glass Victus?

Corning has announced that  Samsung will be its first customer to launch a smartphone with Gorilla Glass Victus. With the Galaxy Note 20 series just around the corner, we can expect it to be the one. Other manufacturers are said to soon follow suit for their flagship devices.
Due to the improved scratch-resistance of the Victus, it will be much more difficult to shatter. (Image: Corning)
Considering that the cost of manufacturing Gorilla Glass Victus is the same as manufacturing Gorilla Glass 5, we can expect the manufacturers using Gorilla Glass 6 in their flagship lineups to transition to Victus, with an increase in the cost of the devices.

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