iPhones and the best Android phones are getting a big toughness upgrade

For years, phone geeks joked that the Nokia 3310 was so tough that if you dropped it, it'd break the floor. But in the very near future that could be true of the best Android phones and iPhones, because their already tough glass is about to get a whole lot tougher.

Both iPhones and Android phones are protected with ultra-tough glass from Corning: an Apple-specific version called Ceramic Shield in the case of Apple, and Gorilla Glass Victus+ in high end smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S22. And now there's a new version: Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

Why Victus 2 will be the smash hit you can't smash

The new version of Victus is designed to deliver much improved drop performance on concrete, which is the surface you're most likely to drop any smartphone onto by accident. And it's designed to do that without compromising on the impressive scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass Victus.

According to Corning's VP of Gorilla Glass, David Velasquez, "We challenged our scientists not only to create a glass composition that was durable enough to better survive drops from waist height onto rougher surfaces than asphalt, but to improve cover-glass performance for larger and heavier devices". In tests, the new glass survived 1m drops onto simulated concrete and 2m on asphalt, and was four times more scratch-resistant than other smartphone glass.

This is a really big deal: Gorilla Glass in its various flavours has been in over 8 billion devices so far, so any improvements in Corning's technology will find their way into stacks of devices that we'll use every day.