We've been huge fans of future possible sapphire solutions for smartphones ever since MWC. We've also visited the factory that can make this possible. Sapphire is known to be an extremely tough material, almost impossible to scratch. It has its own downside though: it's also very brittle. Gorilla Glass, on the other hand, is less brittle, but, it is much easier to scratch. Gorilla Glass vs sapphire has recently become a real topic. Currently, the majority of phone makers are using Gorilla Glass, from Corning, in one of its version iterations -- adding up for 1.5 billion consumer electronic ...

Sometimes you just have to schedule a podcast a few hours before a major news event, and as a result you've got to scramble to come up with some valid-sounding speculation about just how useful a Facebook Phone could really be. It's not like we haven't tossed this notion around before, but doing it on the air, off-the-cuff, imbues our lives with a certain energy, a certain je ne sais quoi, if you will. Or even if you won't. Whatever; we have a good time riffing. You'll listen and like it! Ahem. All that, plus some chat on just how big a copycat LG's Optimus G Pro is - and how well it does ...

Last month at MWC, we were treated to a rather compelling demonstration: a smartphone screen made of material so tough, it was practically un-scratchable. The company providing the demo was GT Advanced Technologies, and the screen was made of a material you've probably heard of, but in other contexts: sapphire. In an industry where hardware is fast becoming the differentiator of choice, "sapphire" is the new buzzword for legions of excitement-seeking tech fans. We're going to take a closer look at how synthetic sapphire comes into being, and how it finds its way into smartphones, next ...

That $10,000 Android we looked at a couple weeks back, the Vertu Ti, might not have been the most impressive phone in the specs department, but it did have one killer feature: a screen made of synthetic sapphire. Single crystals of aluminum oxide like this have a Mohs scale hardness of nine, meaning you're going to need something in the same league of hardness as other sapphires or diamonds in order to scratch them. At the MWC this year, we got to check out a demonstration of just what kind of damage sapphire screens can endure. In the battle of glass versus concrete, concrete will almost ...

This time last year, Corning was tipping us off to the forthcoming launch of its second generation Gorilla Glass, and sure enough, the extra-tough glass made its debut just a few days later. This year's CES is once again just a matter of days away, and Corning is right back at it, readying us for the debut of Gorilla Glass 3. Considering how smartphone manufacturers continue to use glass not just for phone screens, but for its aesthetic qualities as well, we're just as much in need of durable glass treatments as ever. For as fortified as Corning's first two iterations of Gorilla Glass have ...