‘Unbreakable’ Samsung OLED panel hints at cracks in Gorilla Glass relationship

Samsung

• Samsung's "unbreakable" OLED panel has been certified by Underwriters Laboratories.
• To receive the certification it had to pass military-standard drop and temperature tests.
• Samsung says the new panel has a similar weight, transmissivity, and hardness to glass.

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Samsung has announced that its new "unbreakable" display-pannel has been certified by Underwriters Laboratories after passing military-standard tests. The panel is a flexible OLED with an "unbreakable" substrate and a plastic overlay window attached. Samsung's current high-end smartphones use a glass covered window.

The testing involved dropping the panel 26 times from a height of 1.2 meters, as well as temperature tests at 71 degrees and -32 degrees Celcius. The panel is also said to have survived a 1.8-meter drop. Samsung said it's panel passed all these tests with no sign of damage.

In a further video released by Samsung (spotted by Engadget) a Samsung employee hits the display repeatedly with a hammer. Once again there is no sign of damage.

While certainly impressive, the tests don't show how resistant to scratches from day-to-day use the plastic display window would be. However, a Samsung representative stated that the new display is not only unbreakable but also has a hardness that is very similar to glass. Perhaps this suggests that the display will be able to resist scratches.

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Currently, Samsung phones like the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy Note 8 use Corning Gorilla glass to protect their OLED panels. With Samsung's long-awaited foldable phone on the horizon, the South Korean giant could be looking to keep its business much closer to home when it comes to displays in the future.

When Corning announced Gorilla Glass 6, Corning said that the glass survives an average of 15 one meter high drops onto rough surfaces.  While this is noticeably fewer drops than what Samsung claims its displays can handle, Samsung didn't mention the surface its panels were dropped on to.

At the moment, there is no mention of which phones will get the panel. The Galaxy Note 9 is upcoming and there were rumors that Samsung had delayed its release sightly so it could make adjustments to the phone's display. However, these rumors may be unrelated to the new display panel.

Next up: Gorilla Glass vs Dragontail Glass vs tempered glass and beyond

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