Samsung is about to enjoy the benefits of upgraded camera hardware, one that should help protect your camera without a loss in overall quality.
The makers of the super-strong Gorilla Glass have announced two new kinds of glass with DX and DX+ technology: glass designed for covering camera lenses, and boosting the overall quality of your snaps. And future Samsung phones will be the first to use the glass.
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Technically DX is a composite material, not actual glass, and it’s actually been in use since 2018. The composite itself is a thin layer made by fusing glass with various different coatings. Coatings that make the glass more durable, and add anti reflective qualities.
However this is the first time it’s being utilized for smartphone cameras. That required a lot of very specific refinements, the goal of which was to make the glass as durable as sapphire without limiting the amount of light that can come through.
Normally these sorts of refinements have a detrimental effect in light passthrough, which is no good. After all, the less light that reaches the lens, the worse the photos are going to look. But according to Corning this means the new glass is not only more durable and scratch resistant, it also allows “98% light capture."
Samsung is going to be the first company to adopt the new camera glass, though it’s not entirely clear which devices will get that treatment. It may have arrived too late to expect it on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 or Galaxy Z Flip 3, which are rumored to launch at Samsung Unpacked on August 11.
However the timings might be right to see the new glass on the Samsung Galaxy S22 range, which is expected to arrive in early 2022.
The glass itself won’t do much to improve the quality of your photos on its own. However getting scratches on your camera lens will end up negatively impacting your snaps, and the more you get the worse it'll be. Anything that can be done to protect the lenses, especially now we have so many, should be done.
After all that’s why you’re not able to buy specialist camera lens covers for more popular phones like the iPhone 12 and Samsung Galaxy S21.
Having camera glass that is more resistant to scratches and damage is important, and crucially Corning has worked to ensure this strength doesn’t come at the expense of the camera’s most important feature.
- More: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked preview: Everything we expect to see
