Gadgetory

people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones but what about people who carry glass phones I'm Joe Levi and on this episode of the pocket now power user we're going to talk about the glass that covers your smartphone tablet or wearable okay now power user is a series of articles and videos that's aimed at taking the average user giving them information and bringing them up to more of what we would call a power user today's topic is glass let's jump right in almost all of our smartphones tablets and even wearables have a screen on them of some sort some are large some are small they all have different things that they need to account for watches for example need to be a little bit more rugged and stand up to being knocked against a wall whereas a phone needs to stand up to the rigors of being dropped into a pocket and taken out several times a day I'll have something in common you look through them at the display beneath each one of those displays has its own unique challenges and its own unique way of overcoming them so let's talk a little bit about the materials that go into those screens and the benefits and disadvantages of each Christophe is plastics plastics are relatively inexpensive they're relatively easy to make moldable into virtually any shape and have a lot of beneficial properties some plastics are even self-healing though the self-healing ones aren't transparent so we can't really use them as a screen not yet anyway the advantage of plastics are well endless they're great but they're very very scratch about almost everyone back in the classical era of PDAs you know palm Newton pocketpc almost everyone back then either had a scratched up screen or a screen protector and they usually had a screen protector over scratched up screen there had to be a better product for it and in fact there was glass glass is a great thing to look through after all we're looking through a glass panel at a screen on our mobile devices it only makes sense that we've used the same material that we use to look out into the real world whether that's from an office building your home or even your car it's glass glass is great it's very hard it's relatively scratch resistant but it does have some downsides it's more expensive than plastic a little bit more limited has to be substantially thicker than plastic to accomplish the same job scratch resistance is a problem there are various different manufacturing processes and brand names like corning's Gorilla Glass 2 and 3 and every version that they'll come up with after that that adds some new level of scratch resistance or other feature benefit to their product other devices have non name-brand glasses sitting over the top of their display that try and accomplish the same thing the downside they're still scratch abul although scratch resistant and just like the glass in your car door or the glass in your window they break they shatter and it's not good sometimes it even causes personal injury next up is sapphire now as far as hardness goes we're told that sapphire is like number two on the scale of hardness materials number one being diamond and I don't think we're going to see a diamond display anytime soon though that's not out of the realm of possibility sapphire is significantly more expensive than glass sometimes on a factor of 10 to 30 times more expensive what does that mean means devices that are going to start coming out with sapphire displays are going to come at a premium cost the advantages sapphire cannot be scratched and I'll put that in air quotes by anything other than another sapphire or a diamond hopefully this means it will be the end of our scratches realistically probably not however scratch resistance is a very good thing sapphire is a very cool line item to see on a spec list but chances are you're going to be paying for that line item more than you're paying for the benefit of the screen itself last up or coatings coatings are some kind of an application some material that is applied on top of a screen that can take the form of either an oil phobic type coating which shayla phobic means it repels the oils that are naturally found all around us we touch our devices with our fingers we touch our devices with our palms we hold our devices up to our faces and get oil against them which causes smudges and blurs and it's just gross oil of public displays aren't friendly to that kind of repels the oils and keeps your devices from having smudges and fingerprints and all kinds of stuff on them there's another benefit to that I'll come back to next up our antimicrobial and antibacterial coatings these are coatings that when applied to the screen aren't friendly to bacteria and microbes since we have these all around us every day would be nice if we could keep our screens nice and clean and not being little petri dishes for growing icky things on them if you keep your device clean it's probably not going to be an issue and this is more one of those things that you just find on the line item to help you feel better about the device without doing all that much but who knows maybe it's a good thing after all these coatings whether oil phobic microbe antimicrobial er whatnot they also serve another purpose because they are literally repelling things from the screen when you have stuff that's the technical term that would otherwise scratch the screen these coatings stand as a dividing layer between those items and the display itself that means when something is pressed against it it has to go through the coating and down into the actual display to make that scratch with my nexus 4 that never happened that oil a phobic coating did a very good job at repelling more than just oil and everything that would normally have scratched it just slid across the surface and off the other side and I didn't have a problem with it some of the later devices like the Nexus 5 haven't been quite as slick and I really really missed that about the nexus 4 in this episode of the pocket nail power user we talked about the material that covers your smartphone tablet or other wearable it's only part of the equation make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on part 2 where we go into the guts of what's behind that class also if you liked the video make sure you hit the thumbs up and while you're at it why not tell your friends about this series and everything else that we offer on pocket now using any one or all of your favorite social media networks pocketnow helping you understand what goes into the devices that are in your pocket I'm Joe Levi thanks for watching