Broken iphone screen showing how glass shatters with many cracks
By Categories: ResearchComments Off on My Cell Phone Screen Broke Again – is a Cracked Phone Screen inevitable?

A broken phone is never fun. It’s often a very saddening, frustrating and inconvenient thing to crack your phone or damage your phone in any way. It’s such a big deal to realize after a hard drop that you have a damaged phone. You likely often curse “stupid phone screen cracked again” and wonder “why do they make the front and back glass?!”

 

 

Reason One: Phone Screen glass is super transparent

 

Glass is super transparent. So much focus in modern smart phones is making a screen bright and beautiful so choosing a material that will allow the screens colours to shine brightly is one big reason for glass phone screens.

 

Reason Two: Phone Screen Glass has high Hardness and scratch resistance

 

Glass is hard. A phone glass screen is very resilient to scratching. The phone lives in your pocket or purse with your car keys and other things that threaten to scratch and damage your phone screen. Glass hardness allows your screen to stay relatively less scratches when compared to other materials. To explain the benefit of a glass phone screen I must first cover the pros and cons of its alternatives.

Remember your old blackberry smartphone? The curve, or the bold? These smartphones were praised for their durability and the fact that you could drop your phone without an inevitable phone screen crack. This durability was all thanks to a primary phone construction of plastic materials, including the phone screen. The obvious benefit was less broken phone screens, the plastic was far more resilient and less likely that the phone screen would crack because plastic is less hard and more forgiving to impact. The downside to these plastic cell phone screens was tied directly to the benefit, the same softness and forgiveness property of the plastic meant that the screen would scratch incredibly easy. This easy scratching meant that although your screen remained crack free, the phone screen would become so scratched up that it would be hard to see what you were doing on your phone, especially in sunlight.

 

Reason Three: Phone screen durability for Slim phone designs

Fast forward to today, the devices that dominate the cell phone market are slim, sleek and stylish. The once dominant Canadian cell phone, Blackberry has faded into history along with its bulky plastic design. The modern design of a cell phone does not allow for a cell phone screen with anything other than glass. In order to make your phone slim, the glass protective layer is laminated to the display panel with absolutely zero void between. This elimination of the dead space between the top protective screen and the display means the ability to make a slim and sleek phone but makes it phone suicide to have a plastic screen covering. Why? The plastic phone screen covering as discussed above is not hard enough and when its laminated directly to the display panel it is unable to provide enough protection to the phones display because impacts will transfer through the softer plastic covering into the display below. The rigid hardness of glass screens are essential to the protection of the phones LCD or OLED display below. The same characteristic that makes glass the perfect solution to protect your phone screen is the same characteristic that makes it susceptible to screen cracks.

 

 

Reason Four: Money – The Cost of glass phone screen replacements

 

This point might be hard to hear for some people who have had the misfortune of a broken phone screen, but believe it or not, the fourth reason for the usage of glass is cost effectiveness. Now admittedly the cost benefit is more for the manufacturer than the customer. The alternative that many plead for is a sapphire screen. Sapphire is incredibly strong, used one high end wrist watches and the camera lens’ on smart phones so why not use it of the front and back of phones? The simple answer I suspect is cost. Sapphire is a more costly alternative to gorilla glass phone screens. When you consider the incredible large-scale volume of production even one-dollar cost increase matters to the phone companies. The other side of this is looking at the revenue generated from the screen repairs every year, each broken phone contributes to an additional stream of revenue for Apple, Samsung, Google and the other smartphone companies. Once again, Follow the money. The other benefit for these phone companies is their warranty clause that frees them of responsibility due to physical damage. Warranties like apple limited warranty which are included free for one year cost the company money. Any problem with an iphone within the first year related to defects, like service issues, charging issues, spreaker issues, wifi issues and much more are covered by warranty and when they cover a phone it costs them money to replace or repair free of charge. Each broken phone screen means the company no longer is liable for issues under warranty due to physical damage. So an indestructible screen would mean no signs of physical damage, and therefor cost more money in warranty claims for phone issues.

 

 

 

Reason Five: back glass for wireless charging

 

 

The reason your phones back is now made from glass Is to accommodate the wireless charging function all flagship phones now offer. Metal backs although stronger, impede the ability to charge wirelessly. By implementing a glass back on your phone they allow the phone to take charge wirelessly through the glass with the obvious trade off being broken back glass. Do you believe wireless charging is a feature worth the risk of a broken back glass? The major phone companies believe it’s worth it. That’s why you see iPhone back glass, Samsung back glass, google back glass, lg back glass, HTC back glass and almost every other back cover made of back glass. Yes your back glass breaking would be unfortunate but it’s the cost you pay for wireless charging. At least you have Phone Doctor to repair back glass professionally and safely in addition to front screen repairs.

 

 

There are many reasons for glass used in modern smartphones despite the many downfalls of glass. We don’t know all the reasons and we maybe never will, but one thing is for sure, Phone Doctor will be here to fix your phone whether it’s a broken iPhone screen, broken Samsung screen, Broken Google screen, or almost any other phone screen or back glass. If you are in need of phone repair service, contact us today to schedule your cell phone repair. Did we miss anything? Let us know what you think facebook.com/seethephonedoctor.