The iPhone 6’s fully scratch-proof crystal sapphire glass screen looks more and more likely
Your next iPhone will laugh in the face of debris, thanks to an impenetrable screen. Just don't throw diamonds at it...
The latest in a long line of rumours pointing to a sapphire screen for the next iPhone strongly suggest that – short of running the tip of a diamond across it – it’ll be unscratchable.
Apple already uses crystal sapphire to protect its Touch ID Home button and camera lens on the iPhone 5s, but it’s going to ned a lot more sapphire if it wants to mass produce entire screens protected by it.
And that’s where GT Advanced Technologies comes in. We’ve seen it before, when Apple paid US$578 million dollars to help it produce sapphire glass, but Forbes’ analysis of the company’s earnings report reveals that its got some pretty big plans for this year.
GT looks set to ‘only’ make US$20-30 million in the first quarter of this year, but it’s predicting a whopping US$500-700 million dollars in revenue for the last six months alone.
A common estimate for the price of sapphire glass is three to four times the cost of a Gorilla Glass screen, which costs around US$3.
If you throw that price into GT’s predicted revenue, that’s around 50 million pieces of sapphire glass.
That’s a huge order, and we can only think of one product that’s expected to shift so many numbers. The iPhone 6.
It also confirms that the iPhone 6 will be launched in the later half of this year, once again pointing to a September reveal.
An unscratchable screen will be a truly useful innovation which we hope will spread across all smartphones and tablet like wildfire.
Cover both sides of a device in the stuff and you can say goodbye to bulky cases for good. We for one, can’t wait.
READ MORE: Apple iPhone 6: price, specs and release date – everything we think we know
[Forbes]
Esat Dedezade
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