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Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by kragen on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @09:54AM (#4842776)
Your comment is wrong from beginning to end.

Normal window glass is Mohs hardness 5.5 or so, as is unhardened steel (your fork and pocketknife); hardened steel (e.g. a metal file) is more like 6.5. That means you can scratch regular steel with glass and vice versa, with some difficulty. (Try it. I just did.) Brass (your key) is around 3 or 4, so it won't scratch glass.

There are lots of things with Mohs hardness above 5.5, including most common metals (except brass, aluminum, copper) and most rocks.

Sand is almost never made up of glass particles. It's often made up of crystalline quartz (Mohs hardness 7) which can scratch regular glass easily. Gorilla Glass has Mohs hardness of about 9, so quartz won't scratch it.

Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by Osmium on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @12:07PM (#4843546)
Notable, then, is the fact that Apple felt the need to make their lens covers out of sapphire (Mohs hardness of 9). If they were using Gorilla glass on the back, and it has the hardness you claim, then surely that isn't necessary?
Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by kragen on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @03:01PM (#4844362)
I have no idea if Apple was using Gorilla Glass on the back, nor did I know whether GG is harder or softer than sapphire. I'd assume softer, since it's just a glass, right?

http://www.corning.com/docs/specialtymaterials/pisheets/PI23... gives its Vickers hardness as 701 kgf/mm^2, which http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness#... would seem to place in the 5-6.5 range of the Mohs scale, nowhere close to 9. However, Vickers is a scale of resistance to plastic deformation, while Mohs is a (highly nonlinear!) scale of resistance to abrasion, so perhaps take that with a gram of potassium chloride.

Other random places suggest sapphire's Vickers hardness is around 1800-2200 kgf/mm^2, which is substantially harder than the number Corning's brochure gives for Gorilla Glass.

Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by ktsmith on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @12:28PM (#4843635)
Optical sapphire has different properties than gorilla glass. There can be reasons other than hardness for using a material as a lens cover.
Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by Osmium on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @12:40PM (#4843700)
Agreed; but Apple did state specifically that they were using it because it was more durable. In regards to optical properties, some people are speculating the sapphire is the cause of the iPhone 5's worse susceptibility to lens flare.
Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by bryanlarsen on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @10:24AM (#4842933)
Deleted. Thanks for making your comment standalone so nobody else has to waste their time reading mine.
Re:Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone... by kragen on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @04:33PM (#4844884)
I'm glad it is helpful!