Why are sapphire screens so expensive?

Sapphire screens have been sought after by some mobile phone manufacturers recently due to their extremely high hardness, especially with the rumor that the iPhone 6 will use a sapphire screen this fall, which has given people some understanding of sapphire screens.

As early as 2012, Apple was the first to use sapphire as the camera lens on the iPhone 5. In 2013, the Home button of the iPhone 5s used sapphire glass. This year, sapphire was also used in some Apple smart watches.

There are not many sapphire screen phones

Sapphire screens were previously mostly used in high-end or military-grade products, such as Motorola's luxury phone AURA, the Vertu Ti that costs more than 60,000 yuan, and Kyocera's triple-proof phone Brigadier released this year.

Domestic mobile phone manufacturers, such as Gionee, vivo and Huawei, have also launched smartphones with sapphire screens.

In addition, there are not many mobile phones with sapphire screens. Even the iPhone 6 only uses sapphire glass on the Touch ID button and the main camera.

The price and manufacturing cost of sapphire make it a high-end product, which is still some distance away from widespread use.

High manufacturing cost

In terms of manufacturing cost and time, the manufacturing process of sapphire display is very time-consuming. It generally takes 14-18 days to grow from aluminum oxide raw materials into a crystal rod. This production time is a thousand times that of glass.

Sapphire has poor toughness and is very brittle when under heavy pressure, making it difficult to cut. It needs to be cut into sapphire screens using diamond or laser machines, and the yield rate is very low, which further increases the extremely high cost of sapphire screens.

The cost of a piece of sapphire is about 10 times that of glass of the same specification. Taking the iPhone as an example, if sapphire is used as the display material, it may increase the cost of the iPhone by $100, which is an additional burden for consumers.

The cost of a sapphire screen for a 5.5-inch mobile phone may reach $100 per piece, while the cover glass costs only about $5-10. This is one of the reasons why sapphire cannot be accepted by the market in the short term.

Sapphire also has weaknesses

Although sapphire screens are theoretically scratch-resistant, they are also more fragile than common Corning glass. In fact, sapphire is more likely to break than Corning Gorilla Glass when a phone is dropped. Even when sapphire is good enough to prevent shattering or scratches, it may not be able to prevent cracks from forming, and these cracks will eventually cause the display to fall apart.

Sapphire is also bad for battery life. Because glass is more transparent, light can pass through it more easily. However, to make a sapphire display as bright as a glass display, it consumes more power.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.