The iPhone 7 camera glass is sapphire

Since the launch of the iPhone 7, a lot has been said about the glass that protects the device's camera lens, as well as the glass of the home button under which the fingerprint sensor is. Some resistance tests carried out by different people and uploaded to YouTube have challenged Apple's official specifications by "demonstrating" that they do not reach the level of resistance that a material such as sapphire should have, and many have come to assure that Apple did not use this material, lying to its customers, or that it used a poor quality sapphire and that is why it did not resist as it should. However, a new video shows that it is indeed sapphire, even analyzing the composition of the crystal in the laboratory, and even Apple has issued an official statement. All the information below.

The video that is above these words is from the same person who questioned the composition of the camera glass in another previous video, and it is a real gem because you cannot be more rigorous and objective in it, reaching analyzing the glass of the iPhone camera under the electron microscope and comparing it with the sapphire glass of a Tissot watch. Despite being in English, it is worth it because there are few times that a YouTuber goes so much trouble to create such a rigorous video. In it we can also find the solution to all this mess about sapphire and why it scratches when it should not. The explanation is simple: it does not scratch, it fractures. Although it may sound the same, it really isn't. The chamber glass is not thick enough to withstand the pressure exerted during the test, and although at first glance it seems to be scratched with a 6 hardness punch (it should not if it is sapphire), the reality is that the pressure does that the glass is fractured, not scratched, as can be seen under the microscope.

Apple for its part has not hesitated to confirm that indeed the crystal is sapphire, as Phill Schiller himself did a few days ago on Twitter, insisting that this type of test must be carried out in a laboratory fulfilling a series of very precise requirements for it to be valid. Comparing the glass of a watch with a glass of a mobile camera is not correct, since the thickness of both crystals is very different and therefore the level of pressure they support until they break is not the same. It seems that the mystery has been solved.