Cracking the case of a smartphone and its unfairly crack-accused case

By the point you learn this, you seemingly can have already seen my upcoming protection of Google’s August product announcement occasion in a bit greater than per week (as I write this), the place the Pixel 9 collection is forecasted to be launched. Nevertheless, as common readers might recall, I’m nonetheless toting two Pixel 7s as my smartphone “day by day drivers”, together with a Pixel 6a as my “vice-phone”:

following a longstanding just-in-case spare technique that as you’ll quickly see lastly got here in useful!

Smartphones’ utilization patterns make them significantly susceptible to being dropped, whether or not its onto arduous surfaces or into fluids (reminiscent of…err…what’s in a rest room bowl). Mechanical robustness is due to this fact important to lengthy working life, a very vital requirement contemplating their stored-data and app significance to their homeowners coupled with their excessive costs. All of which has made their dependence on glass supplies a longstanding necessity curiosity to me.

The display screen’s an apparent one you actually can’t keep away from, at the very least till sensible glasses go mainstream sometime (theoretically), thereby obviating smartphones’ existence rationale. As a substitute, smartphone designers are caught with counting on structurally bolstered glass compounds, reminiscent of Corning’s Gorilla Glass collection, that declare to attenuate the probabilities of a crack. Per Wikipedia:

Gorilla Glass…is a model of chemically strengthened glass now in its ninth technology. Designed to be skinny, gentle, and damage-resistant, its floor power and crack-resistance are achieved via immersion in a scorching potassium-salt ion-exchange tub.

However glass smartphone backs have at all times been a bit weird to me, regardless of that I grok their conceptual advantages, each absolute and relative to various supplies. Corning this time:

As main machine producers unveil their newest fashions, many are making a shift to include extra superior glass into their designs, and never simply on the entrance as a protecting cowl glass. One place the place extra glass is showing is on the again of latest cell client digital units. This pattern is especially thrilling as a result of glass provides advantages that different supplies, like plastic and metallic, simply can’t provide.

 With glass on the again in addition to the entrance, the most recent smartphones are assembly aesthetic and design milestones, together with extra elegant type components. However, they provide further efficiency advantages. The superior bodily and electromagnetic properties of glass make it significantly well-suited to allow new capabilities machine makers are incorporating into their designs.

 So what are the advantages of getting an all- glass smartphone?

 Improved Reception

1. Glass is good for the antenna efficiency of your telephone, not like aluminum and different supplies. Steel supplies like aluminum lack radio frequency (RF) transparency, which means that the antenna embedded in your machine has a tougher time discovering a sign. New all-glass telephone designs imply extra bars in additional areas resulting in sooner knowledge transmission.
2. Higher Wi-fi Charging
   At this time’s latest telephones are shifting to wi-fi charging, and for a similar causes listed above, metallic can intrude with wi-fi charging expertise. Glass, significantly skinny, powerful glass like Corning® Gorilla® Glass, is used as an alternative choice to metallic on the again of telephones so shoppers get a sooner cost with out plugging within the machine to a standard charger.
3. New Ranges of Customization
   Because the backs of telephones don’t have the identical optical transparency necessities because the entrance show, glass can present designers with new potentialities for personalization. Corning’s true-color glass ceramics — or Vibrant Gorilla Glass — provides superior scratch resistance in comparison with plastic and unlocks a full palette of coloration choices with premium high quality photograph life like pictures.

 And eventually, there are the cameras, whose lenses’ outer components aren’t sometimes straight uncovered to the skin world. As a substitute, there’s an middleman clear (duh) protecting cowl that’s mostly glass fabricated as effectively. Right here, for instance, is the entrance digicam of certainly one of my Pixel 7s; be aware that I’ve additionally acquired a tempered glass display screen protector on it:

And right here’s the again, for now utilizing a case-less “inventory” photograph:

Till just lately, there was just one digicam on the again of smartphones, akin to that on the entrance. However because the Pixel 7 exemplifies, issues have gotten a bit extra sophisticated these days. Left to proper within the photograph, built-in inside a standard “bar” that juts out from the again panel, you’ll see:

• The usual main lens, with 82° discipline of view (FoV)
• A spectral/flicker sensor, and above it, twin side-by-side autofocus sensors (neither of that are clearly seen within the “inventory” picture; maintain that thought)
• An ultrawide lens with 114° FoV
• A microphone enter, and
• The LED flash

The Pixel 7 Professional provides a 3rd 5x telephoto digicam, to the proper of its now-125° FoV ultrawide lens. And whereas the Pixel 7a appears to be like just like the Pixel 7 (albeit with a plastic-vs-glass again), its ultrawide digicam is as soon as once more focal length-tweaked, this time to ship a 120° FoV.

The circumstances I exploit on each of my Pixel 7s are Limitless fashions from Mous (Aramid Fibre and Black Leather-based, to be exact), and though they’re a good bit costlier than the no-names on Amazon, they’re fairly slick. For one factor, they’re fairly rugged (once more, maintain that thought):

and so they even have Magsafe-compatible magnets constructed into them:

Additional to Mous’s safety claims, for those who revisit the sooner photograph of the entrance digicam, you’ll discover a “lip” that extends above the display screen. That “lip” goes all the best way across the entrance, creating an “air hole” designed to forestall the display screen from straight impacting with the bottom if the telephone lands flat…so long as, for instance, the bottom isn’t lined by rocks or different objects thick sufficient to surmount that hole.

What about that rear “digicam bar”? Glad you requested. Right here’s what each of my Pixel 7s, an “Obsidian” one on AT&T for private use and a “Snow” one on Verizon for work (which I’ve additionally included for enhanced color-contrast viewing functions), appear to be from an angle when encased:

Once more, be aware the “lip”. Right here’s the previous, and the precise topic of in the present day’s story, straight on:

So…what occurred? In late June, I occurred to look in the back of my AT&T-enabled Pixel 7 and noticed what regarded like an influence crater centered on high of the ultrawide digicam lens, with cracks emanating from there all the best way to the first digicam to its left. I sadly solely in-retrospect thought that I ought to have snapped a photograph of it (from one other digicam, clearly), however the harm regarded just like a photograph posted by Kyriakos Ktorides on X/Twitter:

My quick response was that I will need to have dropped it, with a pebble or the like impacting and cracking the cameras’ frequent glass cowl. However after wracking my brains, I couldn’t recall any time that I’d dropped the telephone, touchdown on its again or some other orientation. Theoretically, I suppose I might have popped it with the tip of a same-pocket key, however that additionally appeared unlikely.

So I hit up Google and was rapidly (albeit vaguely) reminded of protection I’d beforehand seen on this seemingly pretty widespread difficulty. Initially, all of the studies I got here throughout constantly talked about the ultrawide digicam lens location because the harm origination level, so I believed that maybe optical zoom lens back-and-forth motion had impacted the glass, iteratively weakening it to the purpose the place it lastly fractured. However then I remembered that, with a few exceptions, smartphones’ lenses don’t even have moveable components (other than focus, that’s). As a substitute, they interpolate between the viewpoints of a number of cameras, every with a fixed-focal-length lens, to generate the optical zoom-like impact. Plus, as my analysis finally revealed, cracks seen by others didn’t solely originate from the ultrawide digicam space, anyway.

I’d additionally learn on Reddit and elsewhere that Google had been telling of us that, along with phone-drop artifacts, this cracking is likely to be brought about through the use of the telephone at the side of temperature-change extremes (chilly climes, to be exact). Nevertheless, we’re speaking about mid-summer right here, of us. My spouse and I had additionally simply returned from a visit, however provided that airplane cabins are pressurized, I don’t assume that stress adjustments had been accountable (though we did go between 7,500’ elevation in Colorado and fewer than 1,000’ in Indiana, so…yeah, no…)

Plentiful reporting on-line means that spontaneous cracking unbiased of mishandling or any environmental or different exterior issue is the root-cause conclusion in conditions reminiscent of mine. Fortunately, I ended up being doubly blessed. For one factor, I used to be relieved to study that I had lower than a month left on my manufacturing facility guarantee (I’d additionally bought a third-party prolonged guarantee on the telephone, however protection for conditions like this was unknown). And for an additional, though Google initially balked at protecting these specific repairs, as an alternative blaming person mishandling, the corporate in the end relented and was doing them at no cost below guarantee.

Two days after submitting my declare with Google on-line on Saturday, June 29, I had a free-overnight-shipping field and FedEx label in my arms. Two days later, on July 3 (the day earlier than the lengthy vacation weekend) Google had already obtained and inspected my telephone, confirming that its obligatory repairs had been warranty-covered. The next Tuesday, July 9^th, it was again in my arms, courtesy of one other one-day FedEx cargo and regardless of two middleman weekends and a vacation. As documented, each the entrance and rear digicam modules ended up being changed along with the glass rear digicam array cowl. It’s seemingly good as new, and whereas it was away, I pressed my Pixel 6a into service in its stead, backing up the Pixel 7 then restoring the backup to the Pixel 6a beforehand, and reversing the method upon the Pixel 7’s return.

In closing, whereas the title of this piece refers to “cracking the case”, up to now I admittedly stay a bit baffled as to precisely why the rear digicam array cowl spontaneously shattered. That stated, Ars Technica protection I got here throughout in my analysis contained an fascinating quote:

These specialised smartphone glass panels enhance scratch resistance by constructing stress into the glass. We don’t know the producer of Google’s digicam glass, however a Corning engineer explains the final course of on this Scientific American article, saying, “There’s a layer of compressive stress, then a layer of central rigidity, the place the glass desires to press out, then one other layer of compressive stress.” For those who mess one thing up in your glass components and these layers aren’t in an ideal stability, someday the glass will simply go “pop” and also you’ll get these outward mini explosions.

Right here’s extra background information from the Ars Technica piece:

We’ve seen this precise drawback a number of instances earlier than on this planet of smartphones. Samsung was hit with this difficulty in 2016 on the Galaxy S7 and once more in 2021 the Galaxy S20, each of which kicked off class-action lawsuits.

Additional, the Google scenario isn’t restricted to the Pixel 7; person studies counsel that the Pixel 7 Professional and Pixel 7a are equally stricken. Nor did the corporate seemingly repair the issue with the successor Pixel 8 technology of merchandise, both; right here’s simply certainly one of quite a few case examine examples of cracking points (and sure, Google as soon as once more appears to be initially balking at proudly owning as much as protecting the repairs below guarantee). Luckily, my different (Verizon-enabled “Snow”) Pixel 7 hasn’t exhibited the identical conduct, at the very least but; its manufacturing facility guarantee additionally expired in mid-July, however its Most well-liked Care prolonged guarantee protection is from Google, so hope springs everlasting.

May of us who dropped their telephones attempt to rip-off Google into repairing them at no cost, too? Maybe, Google’s preliminary reticence is due to this fact at the very least considerably comprehensible. However quoting a phrase I’ve additionally utilized in loads of prior writeups, the place there’s smoke there’s often fireplace, and there appears to be a variety of smoke right here. I hope Google kinds this example out for its Pixel 9 and future smartphone households. And if any of you might have glass-composition experience, I’d love to listen to your root-cause theories within the feedback!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Imaginative and prescient Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the corporate’s on-line publication.

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• Google’s fall…err…summer season launch: One-upping Apple with a sizeable product tranche
• The Pixel Watch: An Apple various with Google’s (and Fitbit’s) private contact
• Pixel smartphone progressions: Newest choices and private transitions
• The 2024 Google I/O: It’s (just about) all about AI progress, for those who didn’t already guess
• The Google Chromecast with Google TV: Realizing a resurrection alternative
• Google’s Chromecast with Google TV: Automobile accent similarity, and a post-teardown resurrection alternative?

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