Smartphone glass has gotten much better over the years, but Corning’s new Gorilla Armor feels like the first truly big upgrade we’ve seen in a while. I want it on everything.
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Corning Gorilla Armor was announced earlier this year alongside its debut on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The new option is not just another advancement of Gorilla Glass, but an entirely new type of glass using new materials to provide improved drop and scratch resistance, all while also boosting optical clarity via its antireflective design.
Gorilla Armor is not perfect, obviously. Glass is glass, and it still breaks and scratches. It took just a couple of days under the infamous Max Weinbach test for his Galaxy S24 Ultra to be damaged, but on my end, the glass held up better than any prior Galaxy I’ve used. Where I somehow managed to scratch up the Galaxy S22 Ultra and S23 Ultra within a matter of a couple of weeks, the Galaxy S24 Ultra never saw any damage while I was using it. And that’s probably thanks in large part that Gorilla Armor is actually more scratch-resistant, as tests show.
But, damage aside, the bigger upgrade in my book has been that antireflective property.
Gorilla Armor just makes a device so much more pleasant to use, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I moved back from the Galaxy S24 Ultra to other devices like Pixel 8 Pro, OnePlus 12, and Honor Magic 6 Pro. That antireflective coating is just wonderful, and something I want on every device.
What does the future hold in store for Gorilla Armor? Honestly, it’s hard to know for certain.
In speaking with Corning at MWC briefly (where the picture at the top of this post was taken), I asked about Gorilla Armor and the reply I got didn’t really hint we’ll be seeing it more widely anytime soon. Which, frankly, makes sense. The next logical candidates for Armor to show up include the next Motorola Edge (which is likely to use Vicuts 2 given the context of Motorola’s MWC announcement), the front panel of the Galaxy Z Fold 6, and maybe the Pixel 9 series. Of those, I think the Pixel is the most likely given Google wasn’t shy about immediately jumping to Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the Pixel 8 series, but even then, that means we’re quite a ways out from the debut and, realistically, I’m not even sure it’ll happen given that Samsung didn’t even bring Armor to the S24 and S24+.
Have you used Gorilla Armor?
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