Hello there iPhone fans…
It seems that Apple is ready to take the plunge and move from the not-so-tough Gorilla Glass to Sapphire Crystal for their screen material – which has been around for years.
In fact, Sapphire was used in the iPhone 5S as a camera lens and for the home button – both for durability and clarity.
Sapphire has been used in uncountable applications over the years. For example, many high-end watches have sapphire crystals for durability – because if you’re like me, I seem to bang my watch around as I move through life.
Will your new iPhone start out like this?
Apple’s move to install a costly sapphire crystal display on the iPhone 6 could prove to be a difference maker for some people. While I have no doubt that it will be more scratch resistant, I have doubts that it will be more shatter-proof than Gorilla Glass. At this point it’s just my feeling about the paper-thin sapphire but we will see…and I’m very interested to learn about the real-world results coming in a couple of months.
As the Owner of a repair center for more than a decade, I can tell you that each iPhone that is released has offered several challenges and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t worried a time or two. I’m sure that Apple will throw a lot of money toward the sapphire crystal display marketing and I do hope that it’s more durable than older revisions of the iPhone screen; I’m just not convinced that it will be.
We’ve repaired hundreds or thousands of phones. I’d say 3 of those were for “scratches” in the glass.
There’s another issue that can cause a bit of heartburn here as well for some repair centers; that there’s rumors of a “matched” IC chip that’s installed on the LCD of each iPhone 6. This means that simply “swapping” out screens will be a thing of the past. It will be a true repair and when it may seem simple to some, it will be impossible for others.
We will keep you posted on the iPhone 6 and we will report back after it’s release to let you know about the repair capability, feasibility and costs – and I might just have to get one!
Stay tuned to the Mission Repair blog.
Take care, Ryan
