Make phone screens out of diamond so they don't break

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romyaz@reddit

this is exactly the reason all our phone screens and body covers are brittle glass. people think harder is better and the marketing is using this narrative. while in reality a flexible compliant material would hold much longer for much cheaper

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Vybo@reddit

Flexible material would scratch easily. It's unfortunately almost always the balance between the two - scratch resistant or tough?

Way back when, phones (even touchscreen PDAs) did not have glass above the displays. They either had soft resistive touch layer or a simple plastic for cover. Neither did as easy as glass, but even your fingernail could scratch them.

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romyaz@reddit

do you want your phone to shatter on 1 foot fall? i dont

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Vybo@reddit

I would say about myself that I'm not your typical phone user -- I don't use cases or protectors, my phone fell maybe 2 times in the last 10 years and I never experience screen crack or any ding, or anything like that.

So, I'll rather have a nice glass phone that won't scratch if I have a piece of dirt or sand in my pocket for some reason.

On the other hand, when I was younger and didn't have an income that allowed me to buy phones new, I often bought them used (I specifically remember HTC Touch Diamond that I bought) and they were completely covered by hairline scratches and few bigger ones that looked like they were done just by using the included stylus a bit too hard.

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romyaz@reddit

the best phone i ever had was huawei p10. it had a full aluminium body. i used it for 3 or 4 years without any external protection. because aluminium is so compliant, the corners were all banged up from numerous falls, but the screen was perfect. the second best phone i had was pixel 5. the body was plastic similar to abs - same outcome. all my wife's iphones shattered just from looking at them funny. and today all major companies are making bodies from glass of some sort and say its better

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MexicanPenguinii@reddit

Lg flex 2 all day

God that thing was indestructible, and I honestly loved the curved shape

I could stand on it and flatten it entirely, it would just bend back to the usual curve like nothing

I miss when phones tried new form factors, that was by far my favourite. If they went "bezzelless" with that curve I'd cop one in a heartbeat

That curve and OnePlus software would be my forever phone

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Fa1nted_for_real@reddit

Which is the whole point of a screen protector: a typically softer material so that your screen can take minor damage without shattering and then the protector can be replaced when this minor damge is too much.

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jhurst919@reddit

My phone screen seems pretty decent already

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BreakerOfModpacks@reddit

Diamond is, in fact, very easy to break.

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Physical_Floor_8006@reddit

Sapphire is better and we already use it. It just isn't cheap.

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TheSkiGeek@reddit

Yup. Common for fancy watches (and apparently also the Apple Watch). Not quite as hard/scratch resistant as diamond, but less likely to shatter from impact.

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zurribulle@reddit

You might want to learn the difference between hardness and strenght

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Soft_Cranberry6313@reddit

Hardness and toughness*

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zurribulle@reddit

That makes more sense, English is not my first language. Thanks!

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Scrangdorber@reddit

I think strength was a perfectly good word to use in that situation.

'Toughness' is just the more scientific word, the one a physicist would use.

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Soft_Cranberry6313@reddit

Or a metallurgist

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mrpoopsocks@reddit

Or layman.

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AnnualAdventurous169@reddit

The closest we have is sapphire crystal. Very hard but also quite fragile

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XROOR@reddit

Sneak away from the guided tour and use your iPhone screen to cut museum glass quietly to steal larger gemstones.

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noonagon@reddit

those are not at all flexible enough to serve the purpose of phone screens

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ValityS@reddit

Iirc there was a phone a number of years ago with a sapphire glass screen, it was extremely scratch resistant but easy to chip, you can compensate for this by making the body shock absorbant but that then becomes extremely chunky and thin phones are the fad of the day.

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lol_camis@reddit

Diamonds are incredibly hard, not incredibly indestructible. You could easily smash a diamond with a steel hammer. It just wouldn't scratch. It would disintegrate instead.

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Axedelic@reddit

diamonds have cleavage points, where some impacts would have no effect, and others would completely shatter the diamond.

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lol_camis@reddit

Your mom has a cleavage point

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Axedelic@reddit

lmao gottem

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Scrangdorber@reddit

You're thinking of hardness in the Mohs scale sense, not unbreakability. Diamonds don't scratch easily but they do shatter easily, more so than glass usually. Diamonds are hard but also brittle.

Of course low scratchability is advantageous but in this case it's a tradeoff for breakability.

Apple actually did try this with sapphire to prevent scratches (however it shatters easier than glass). IIRC they found it too hard to make the crystals large enough for phones but they use it on some Apple watch models.

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