According to several news sites, there might be a big surprise on
February 18th, 2020 when Samsung is also releasing it’s newest
flagship phone, the Galaxy S11. Unlike it’s predecessor, the hardly
available Galaxy Fold, it’s display will be protected by glass.

Smasung has already registered two trademarks (Samsung UTG™ and Samsung Ultra Thin Glass™) and invested 8 million US$ into glass manufacturer Dowoo Insys to develop an ultra-flexible glass that is about 100 micron thick and thus ultra flexible.

While the plastic cover layer on the Samsung Galaxy Fold’s display was subject to puncture and scratches even by fingernails, the new glass layer should provide at least better resistance against weaker sharp objects like fingernails and thus make puncture of the display less likely to happen.

Other than that, also Corning, the manufacturer of Gorilla Glass, is also researching the development of ultra-thin glass to be again first choice for display protection within it’s circle of customers.

As phones become thinner and also getting more complex shapes (Motorola for example is releasing a 2020 model of it’s legendary RAZR phone), this way of glass development is just expected to happen. However we would also like to see scratch-resistant glass that achieves scratch-resistance beyond the magical level 6 on Moh’s scale which means that gorilla glass still can be scratched with a steel file and this also means that plain keys made of steel (yes, some lock manufacturers make their keys out of steel for stability and durability!) can scratch your phone’s display. The hardest glass found on a phone has been used by Kyocera on their DuraForce Pro 2 phone. This phone still scratches at level 6 but way less than let’s say an Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max or Samsung Galaxy S10+.

Let’s see what Corning will research and develop in the next two years as demand for better display protection has become more important to the premium section of smartphone manufacturers. So is Apple demanding for scratch-resistant glass up to Level 7 to rectify it’s high prices for the iPhone series. And also Samsung would love to have more scratch-resistant glass on their Galaxy and Note series. However the curved display design could make it difficult to achieve as it would mean etching out a curved glass from a glass block. And even synthetically-fabricated sapphire glass would be expensive in a 15x8x4mm dimension. So we won’t see any progress here!

Anyway, let’s see what Samsung is preparing for it’s upcoming Mobile presentation besides the S11. Maybe the Galaxy Fold 2 will be the ever-expected successor everybody would shell out 2’000US$ for. However some rumors are out that the Galaxy Fold 2 could become cheaper than the original Fold. An attempt to outwit the competitors? Not sure about that but let’s get surprised.