14 DAY TRIAL // The iPad 2 touch-panel is made of such high-strength glass that it takes a tremendous amount of force to break, tests carried out by iFixYouri suggest.
iFixYouri is an iPhone repair shop that makes a habit out of testing the limits of Apple’s portables. They will also fix your broken iDevice for a fee.
Last year, they got an iPhone 4, took it in their back yard, and dropped it on the cement several times to determine how big of an impact it would withstand.
The results were not very impressive, in that the glass on Apple’s then-new smartphone shattered almost immediately.
However, that’s considered normal for such a heavy device with little to no protection against blows.
The iPhone’s front glass is also too small to offer a high degree of flexibility, which makes it prone to breaking when dropped onto a hard surface.
That’s not the case with the iPad 2, which not only has a much bigger screen, but also has much more flexible glass.
For all its strength, the iPad 2 touch panel is actually 27 per cent thinner than the one found on the original iPad.
But how did iFixYouri come to the conclusion that iPad 2 has a much more resistant screen than the iPad 1?
Well, they took some replacement panels (available from China to anyone who knows their way around distribution channels), and started bending them to their limits.
As the video embedded below shows, the glass is so flexible that it takes quite a bit of strength to break the iPad’s screen by bending it.
Rest assured, they were able to break it, but special scenarios had to be created, none of which your ultra thin tablet will find itself in.
Going by the footage, you could never press your iPad’s screen hard enough to break it (so long as it is attached to the tablet).