Motorola's new smartphone has a shatterproof screen
"There's a fundamental flaw in the design of smartphones and that's that they have a large piece of glass on the front of them," Jason Wojack, Motorola vice president of engineering, product architecture, said in a video introducing the new Droid Turbo 2.
Motorola found that a screen that wouldn't shatter when dropped was at the top of the wish list of most consumers, so that's what they gave their new phone, announced Tuesday and coming out Thursday.
The company claims its new Moto ShatterShield screen is the world's first shatterproof screen and that it can survive any manner of dropping -- from the top of a ladder, down a flight of stairs, and so on. In testing, it was able to withstand five rounds of accelerated life cycle testing without cracking.
The top layer of the five-layer, 5.4-inch screen is the ShatterShield itself, a protective sheet made with a proprietary hard coating. Below that, the clear interior lens is engineered to be more flexible than glass -- so it won't crack -- but just as clear. Next, there's a redundant touch screen, so if something happens to the front screen, there's a fail safe. Then comes a flexible, shock-absorbing AMOLED display. And at the bottom of the stack: an aluminum sheet that provides structural integrity.
The screen is guaranteed not to crack or shatter, but it will scratch. And should you get the urge to put yours to the test, keep in mind that the rest of the phone is not built to be unbreakable.
The Android phone will be available to Verizon customers Oct. 29, for $624, or $26 a month on a two-year payment plan.