Sapphire was supposed to be a great advantage for the iPhone 6, virtually unscratchable, and by many reports it seemed extremely durable…at least people thought they were testing sapphire glass, or some composite with sapphire in it…or were they?

Well, Apple decided against sapphire, and fairly late in the production process I might add. They went with their number 2 choice, glass made with an ion exchange process, which is commonly known as Corning Gorilla Glass 2. Apple chose not to mention it by brand name for some unknown reason, perhaps they have designs a a competitive glass that doesn’t involve Corning, would be my guess.

The problem with the sapphire glass was multifaceted. Apparently it performed poorly in drop test, shattering too easily, and with the extra screen real estate, the likelihood of breaking or shattering on a drop would have been to great. There are other problems with sapphire…chief among them is that it costs an order of magnitude more to produce, it’s nearly twice as heavy, and it’s not very environmentally friendly.

Sapphire is being used in the Apple Watch, however not in the Sports model, which is interesting when you think about it. Watches are generally good candidates for sapphire, because they generally don’t get dropped and the surface area is much smaller, leaving them less susceptible to breakage. But the Sports model of the Apple Watch comes with the ion, I mean Gorilla Glass. One could certainly expect a sports watch to be roughed up more than the Edition version, so Apple decided that Gorilla Glass was a better choice for durability.

Don’t fret, there’s still sapphire being used on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, on the lens cover of the camera and on the finger sensor. To make the surface of the phone smudge proof, Apple has chosen an Oleophobic coating technology, which literally means fat fearing or rejecting. Basically Lipophobic compounds are coatings not soluble in lipids. Apparently the oil from our finger prints is primarily fat based.