Corning has announced new scratch-resistant smartphone displays

We’re at the point now where manufacturers have figured out that people want a phone that smashes when you drop it, but there is still the problem with scratches on the display. To combat this Corning has revealed that it is working on ‘Project Phire’, a new type of smartphone glass that combines the two.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard about scratch resistant smartphone, who can forget the avalanche of rumours claiming that Apple would be including Sapphire Glass on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus? That never happened and it’s probably a good thing too because it turns out sapphire glass is very rigid, meaning it’s more likely to break if you drop your phone.

Corning’s recently announced Gorilla Glass 4, on the other hand, promises to have exceptional drop protection, so the idea is that the company will combine the scratch-resistance of sapphire glass with the drop protection of Gorilla Glass 4 to make Project Phire.

Its certainly seems a little bit early for Corning to be announcing a brand new type of smartphone glass, after all Gorilla Glass 4 was only publicly unveiled two and a half months ago. But these are our phones we’re talking about, and if Corning can actually combine the two without affecting the cost of smartphones then we the consumer have everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose.

We don’t know when Project Phire will be hitting our phones, but it’s safe to assume that it’s still in the early stages of development. So it probably won’t be included with the flagships towards the end of this year, but hopefully we’ll have heard more about it in 12 months time.