from Hacker News

Why Apple Didn't Use Sapphire for iPhone Screens

by darklighter3 on 9/17/14, 4:24 AM with 108 comments

• by Htsthbjig on 9/17/14, 11:20 AM

  I don't agree on most of these reasons. Light transmission is really good on sapphire, so not a great difference with glass.

  I believe the number 1 reason is:

  1- They want to test it first.

  Apple always do tests, but most of the people do not realize it. For example, do people realize that before making the Ipad big screen they tested it in the magic touchpad?.

  Between the Iphone and the Ipad there is a huge size gap that means lots of problems when you do things in the millions, so they added a glass screen to millions of laptops touchpads.

  They got lots of useful information from service repairs, and they did hide their testing in front of their competitors eyes without them realizing.

  Competitors used plastic in their touchpads. When they could connect the dots(it they did at all), it was too late, Apple was years ahead.

  If they start selling their watches in the millions, and I think they will, mass producing sapphire will make cost plumb.

  There will be testing early at a scale that nobody had done before. I worked for a company that manufactured sapphire glass for the military. We made very expensive SINGLE units for equipment like cameras, and it was only for the exterior side.

  If a market is created, innovation will come. What we did was very expensive and we did not care about price.

  We did work that was so "last century", like creating huge blocks like stones, then cutting and polishing it.

  I am certain that a better method, more energy efficient like growing crystals in molds, is possible, but it needs to have demand in order to justify the investment.

• by seanp2k2 on 9/17/14, 6:25 AM

  Also consider how thick the crystal on a watch is vs how thick the glass on a phone is.

  Personally, I'd rather have "the new iPhone 6: exactly as thick as the last one, but now it lasts 2 days on a charge"

• by bane on 9/17/14, 7:11 AM

  I think the answer to this is that Apple bought half a billion dollars of saphire for the high-end Watch models, and never intended it to go towards the iPhone. That's why it didn't end up in the phones.

  It might also be a partial explanation for not launching the watch yet, they're simply waiting for enough yield to manufacture launch inventory.

• by jonifico on 9/17/14, 1:29 PM

  This video explains the reasons quite well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVQbu_BsZ9o

  Althought saphire is in fact stronger, it is it's lack of flexibility and absorption properties that don't make it as viable for phone use.

• by shearnie on 9/17/14, 5:44 AM

  This "leak" was pretty convincing when i saw it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R0_FJ4r73s

  Is there some trickery, or is gorilla glass as tough as nails like this now?

• by josefresco on 9/17/14, 3:14 PM

  The report they allude to as being "not true" is here: http://wallstreetforensics.com/sapphire-screens-miss-apple-i...

  "By the way, some reports stated that up until a few weeks before the iPhone announcement, Apple was going to use sapphire but dropped it because of yield issues. This is not true."

• by hrjet on 9/17/14, 6:55 AM

  Only the cost reason makes sense to me. Surely the other reasons (such as transmitivity of Saphire) would have been investigated before putting down .5 billion dollars on the counter. The cost, on the other hand, can be passed down to the consumer, when in leading position.

• by judk on 9/17/14, 4:05 PM

  FYI, as reported on Last Week Tonight, Time had merged its editorial and advertising groups, and is going forward as a content marketing company, not a news reporting company.

• by jader201 on 9/17/14, 1:37 PM

  As much as I would love for Apple to find the "perfect" glass that would require blunt force impact from a sledgehammer before it would crack, I wonder if their efforts would be better spent figuring out a way to make the glass more easily and more affordably replaced. An implementation that would almost render the screen disposable (but still as durable or very close to as durable as it is today).

• by mcmancini on 9/17/14, 3:59 PM

  I maintain that the sapphire screen rumors were patently ridiculous to anyone with a basic understanding of materials science.

  The only people who took these rumors seriously were pundits who started and then perpetuated (and now, continue to discuss) the idea.

• by swalsh on 9/17/14, 6:52 AM

  My own experience with the iphone 5 has been pretty good as far as durability is concerned. I live dangerously i guess... in that i never really saw the point in buying a super thin phone then throwing a thick case on it, so I have no case.

  I've dropped my phone numerous times, but I have dropped it twice onto concrete, once with considerable force. So far, no cracks! Just one data point, but also demonstrating that what we have now isn't terrible.

• by whillow on 9/17/14, 1:47 PM

  I keep hearing that Sapphire is the next hardest gem after diamond by these sapphire screen manufacturers. But isn't moissanite harder than sapphire?

• by HaloZero on 9/17/14, 5:58 AM

  So I'm curious don't these same arguments apply to the Apple Watch screen? I guess the tradeoff is people are more likely to smash a watch face?

• by s4sharpie on 9/17/14, 6:48 AM

  Very interesting about the density and energy impacts on sapphire vs glass. In a watch context (where the chance of dropping is less than the chance of scratching the face) the use of sapphire presents some additional challenges for battery life. If the Apple Watch intends to use sapphire, this might play into some of the rumours that release has been delayed because of battery life concerns.

• by friendzis on 9/17/14, 8:46 AM

  Smartphone category is barely competitive. It is a basic economic law of luxury products: as long as there are people willing to pay - the price will increase. 25% increase in price can cause 20% decrease in sales and still result in the same net income.

• by dwightgunning on 9/17/14, 9:47 AM

  Amusing that the author leads with a reference to his own incorrect prediction and then follows up with the sage advice that "all of us need to be more careful before jumping to conclusions in areas like this."

• by bobbles on 9/17/14, 5:52 AM

  Will be interesting if the 6s (or whatever) comes out next year goes for the sapphire screen and introduces the apple watch style 'force touch' capability

• by MereInterest on 9/17/14, 7:12 AM

  As an off-topic comment, when did time.com switch to such an obnoxious layout? Taking two inches off the side and an inch off the top is absolutely ridiculous.

• by jay-saint on 9/17/14, 11:35 AM

  Am I the only one who thinks that Corning sponsored this piece?

• by personZ on 9/17/14, 3:40 PM

  There is a bit of a negative reinforcement recursion going on in the industry, and this is a great example of it.

  Make lots of pieces claiming sources and reasons for why Apple is going to do something big and new and innovative. Endless pageviews, speculation, etc.

  Apple releases a very nice, but completely traditional and incremental upgrade.

  Make lots of pieces explaining why Apple not doing those things you previously said they would do is actually best, because of contrived justifications and reasons. Tonnes of pageviews and links.

  Rinse repeat. This has happened with every Apple release this decade.

• by miahi on 9/17/14, 6:07 AM

  With all the downsides to sapphire (cost, thickness, light transmission), you start wondering if the previous iPhones were using this material just as a marketing point and not because there was an actual benefit to the users.

• by jokoon on 9/17/14, 12:10 PM

  jeez, I don't care at all about that.

  what a tale for such a irrelevant detail. iPhone users are such a category of people of their own, talking about iPhone rumors and truths is like new ways to make conversations.

  do you know you can have a smartphone that has the same functionalities, for one tenth of the price ? how is that not news ?