Gorilla Glass 3 set to be three times tougher than predecessor

Corning has unveiled the latest version of its wide-used Gorilla Glass material at CES, as the firm aims to make smartphones and tablets more durable.

Gorilla Glass 3 will feature Native Damage Resistance technology. Scientists at the firm have tinkered with the atomic configuration of glass to reduce brittleness. The glass is then strengthened it chemically using an ion-bonding procedure to toughen it up.

The firm claims this means the third edition of material will be three times more resistant to damage than Gorilla Glass 2.

For end users this will hopefully mean an end to scratches and reduce the chance of cracking or smashing a smartphone or tablet when it is dropped.

Although Gorilla Glass 3 is likely to been used in a number of high-end devices this year, there could be one notable exception. There have been widespread reports suggesting that smartphone market leader Samsung could ditch Corning in favour of using a plastic display.

The firm is said to unveil the unbreakable technology with its Galaxy S4 handset around April.

However, there is still a trend of using glass on both the front and back panels of the devices to give them aesthetic appeal, so Gorilla Glass is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Devices such as the Google Nexus 4 which have this design feature but the Gorilla Glass 2 have been particularly susceptible to cracking.

It will be interesting to see which handsets packs Corning's material in 2013. The firm noted that devices featuring Gorilla Glass 3 are expected to be unveiled in mid-2013.