The director of content at ENGINEERING.com, Jim Anderton, usually has an opinion and recently that opinion was directed toward the cell phone industry.
Like most of us, he has a history of broken phones and shattered screens. As he says in the video, if he drops a phone from operational height, “it can and does break.” He seemed to raise a question: is there such a thing as a cell phone screen that the average human couldn’t somehow break?
Motorola seems to think so and it will tell you so in only a few words. The company released a minimalist press announcement on its corporate blog, promising to show us rather than tell us about its new product.
And so it did.
(Video courtesy of Motorola Mobility.)
The video, really the only content in the release, shows Motorola president Rick Osterloh dropping first an iPhone 6 and then a Samsung Galaxy S6 face-first onto an arrangement of stone tiles. Predictably, both screens shatter.
He then picks up a Moto X Force and as viewers cringe, ready for impact, the phone takes the fall.
However, it fares much better than the previous devices.
ShatterShield Technology
The Moto X Force is designed to go boldly where no phone has gone before: onto the floor without breaking. The phone is equipped with what Motorola calls a ShatterShield, a series of five layers designed to absorb shock from impacts.
The exterior lens layer is protected from scratches and dents with a proprietary hardcoat. The interior lens has a highly transparent protective shield designed not to crack or shatter.
A dual-touch layer protects the flexible AMOLED touch display and the whole thing sits on a durable aluminum chassis. The company claims that its design is absolutely shatterproof.
Making Bold Claims
In fact, Motorola is so confident in its ShatterShield technology that the company is willing to back it up with a four-year warranty.
That’s right: four entire years. Most cell phone users won’t even own the same phone or be on the same contract for that length of time.
To clarify, the warranty does only apply to the screen and does not cover intentional abuse. The phone will be available in Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America starting in November.
There is also a version in the United States called the Motorola DROID Turbo 2 available exclusively on Verizon.
The Future of Cell Phone Screens
A truly shatterproof screen would mean a lot of things for the cell phone industry. For one thing, it would cause quite the stir with the more accident-prone cell phone users.
Other manufacturers would have no excuse for phones that shatter at the slightest impact, let alone when dropped from normal operational height. As Anderton suggested and Motorola can prove, the issue is entirely about poor engineering.
Consumers want durable, well-engineered products. If manufacturers keep delivering poorly-made and easily breakable phones when it’s clear to consumers that it is possible to do better, current cell phone sales models could quickly become a disaster.
What do you think? Will the Moto X Force and its ShatterShield be the answer to broken phone screens? Will other phone companies follow suit?
For more information, check out the Motorola website.