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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

There's sapphire watch faces for hardness, and sapphire substrate for semiconductors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_on_sapphire)

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I'm expecting genuine diamond iPhone and Watch "glass" within a few years.

That would actually be amazing, imagine the PR power Apple could put behind "perfectly manufactured, conflict-free diamond screens", "better and more flawless than any natural diamond, only the absolute best for our customers".

They could even create the equivalent of a "perfect pixel" guarantee - "perfect lattice" guarantee, the diamond screen is flawless down to the atom or your money back.

That could flip the script on DeBeers in a big way.

Well, Apple tried for the iPhone, and I do believe the watch actually does have a synthetic sapphire screen.. Apple purchased a major stake in a sapphire-making business [1]. But it seems that it still was a bit on the tricky side compared with the recent upgrades in glass technology.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/532636/why-apple-failed-t...

Being Apple they really should be marketing it as transparent aluminum. Just saying.

How brittle is diamond? We know diamond is the hardest, but how brittle is it? It is good to have a non-scratching phone screen, but not if it is really brittle.

The short answer is that diamond is fairly brittle. It has four cleavage planes and I assume this is related to the fact that diamond can be cut in such ornate ways.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that a diamond screen would be worse than what exists today but it wouldn't be something invulnerable and resistant to any impact either.

I have no idea what the Nexus 5X screen is made from, but it finally seems to have solved scratches entirely for me.

Third generation Gorilla Glass.

The predecessor to your phone, my Nexus 5, also contains Gorilla Glass 3, and yeah, I don't use a case, I don't use a screen protector, and there are no real scratches on the screen, and it has rode around in my pocket for over 2 years.

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