Gadgetory

what would you say about a smartphone screen that's made entirely out of sapphire sounds pretty crazy expensive right I'm Jessica doll for CNN here at mobile world congress 2013 in barcelona and this is a demo of a sapphire screen now this isn't the same sapphire jewelry mind out of the ground that really would be expensive instead companies can actually grow crystallized sapphire which is used today already in many different industrial applications military also in aeronautics like in satellites what I have here is a demo device that has a piece of solid sapphire display on top of it so this is an iphone 5 and they've actually used some clear adhesive to glue this sapphire screen on top why would you want it one of the benefits is that only diamonds are harder than it so it really is not going to scratch unless you usually rake a diamond ring or cross phone screen demo this we've got a piece of Barcelona concrete and I've been plowing away at this phone I've been hitting it I've been rubbing the concrete on top of it there are little dust particles but that's from the concrete so you can imagine that if you drop your phone that has this kind of screen on top of it even if it lay out a pretty hard impact you can smack this as much as you want phones fine wipes away clean what we've got in screens right now is very good corning gorilla glass is one of the materials we often use this is said to be two to three times stronger than that it is more expensive to make maybe three to four times more expensive so it's not something that you're going to see on every mobile phone today even tomorrow even probably in five years you are going to see it on really specialized phones this would make a lot of sense on a rugged phone for example and I'm told that the sapphire screen is already on premium phones like ver.2 sapphire is also used by Apple in the iphone camera as a lens cover so it does exist today you're probably wondering if it's as good for navigating around and it seems really responsive again this is a regular iphone with a regular clever and an extra cover on top of it and it is very responsive to my touch so that's pretty cool right good look at our future I'm Jessica doll court for cnet you can have to all of our mobile world congress coverage at cnet com