Why is the glass screen so delicate

[AC Question]

I dropped a quarter on it from 20 inches and it shattered

 

[belodion]

Screens will sometimes shatter for less reason than that. Perhaps when such things happen, the glass has become stressed through bending, or the adhesives used, and it only takes a small force to cause breakage.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

The screen is hard, not tough. The harder something is, the less tough it is. Hardness resists scratching, toughness resists breaking. (And the glass isn't annealed, so it you dropped the quarter on a stress point, or a cleavage plane, it'll break like a diamond does when hit with the soft iron blade that a diamond cutter uses. [Hit a diamond in the wrong spot and it'll shatter too.]) Gorilla Glass is fairly hard, so it's fairly easy to break. (Try "breaking" Jello - it just bends.)

We don't have the knowledge to make something tough, hard and transparent. We can only get to of them in the same material so far. There are hard tough metals, but they're not transparent. There are tough glasses and hard glasses. There are no hard tough glasses. (That's why people put phones in shock-resistant cases.) Even a sheet diamond screen would break under the right stress. (But just about nothing could make even a micro-scratch on it.)