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 ...

We've heard about flexible displays for quite a while. Most of us have envisioned screens that roll up or fold away. Although that may be possible in the future, it's probably not what we'll see right away. Since the Nexus S, Samsung has been working on curved displays, which they called the "Contour Display". Its younger brother, the Galaxy Nexus, also has a curved screen. That's not entirely true. Though the glass is curved, the "screen" is not, and the backs of the devices are decidedly flat. Samsung's YOUM design replaces the glass sheets used in traditional OLED screens with a ...