The company was approved a grant for the development of such phones

Feb 4, 2013 18:21 GMT  ·  By

Soon, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia might bring to the market more durable smartphones, as it has been approved a $1.35 billion grant for the development of “the world's strongest material,” called graphene.

The handset vendor claims that this material is 300 times stronger than steel, which would make smartphones built using it far more durable than existing devices.

Apparently, the European Union has approved said grant for Nokia to “promote high risk research, offset by potential breakthrough with high technological or societal impact,” timesofindia notes in a recent article.

Nokia's CTO Henry Tirri has confirmed that the company had been working with graphene since 2006, and that it has already discovered various areas where it can be successfully applied to in modern computing environments.

However, it still remains to be seen how fast graphene will start being used in mobile devices.