Corning announced its new Gorilla Glass Victus last month and Samsung is one of the first companies to use it with the new Galaxy Note 20 Ultra smartphone. In a new drop test, the latest from Gorilla Glass performed remarkably as it withstood 11 face-down 5-foot (1.5-meter) drops without a single crack on the screen while the iPhone 11 Pro Max didn’t do nearly as well.
PhoneBuff tested out the durability of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra alongside the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Apple has long used Corning’s Gorilla Glass like Samsung, however, it is believed to use a specialized version of the commercially available standard.
The $1,300 Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (full review) takes advantage of Corning’s latest and greatest and it’s impressive how well it held up in PhoneBuff’s drop tests. Those included a back, corner, and front drop with a bonus round of 10 consecutive drops on the smartphones’ displays from just under 5 feet (1.5 meters). As we noted before, Corning says that Gorilla Glass “Victus can also survive 20 one-meter drops on average, whereas Gorilla Glass 6 survives 15 drops from one meter on average.”
The iPhone 11 Pro Max has something likely equivalent to Gorilla Glass 6 (at launch Apple called it the world’s toughest smartphone glass). It came out with a functional touchscreen at the end of the drops, but the cameras were broken with severe cracking on the back and front.
The Note 20 Ultra, in contrast, came out looking great all things considered with no cracks on the display, all of its functionality intact, and just some small cracks on the corner near the rear camera module.
PhoneBuff gave the Note Ultra an almost perfect score of 39/40 with the iPhone 11 Pro Max landing with a 30/40.
Hopefully we’ll see the same Gorilla Glass Victus durability arrive with Apple’s iPhone 12 lineup in the coming weeks.
