[Shanghai Dan]

The Slashdot thread about it here. Lots of very good, science-based comments specifically about how it most likely is NOT sapphire, and what the implications are.

[IncPen]

Bait.

Yawn.

[roadcat]

Much ado about nothing. 5s, years ago. Welcome to FR.

[ETL]

Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide. Whilst typically associated with the color blue, natural “fancy” sapphires also occur in yellow, purple, orange, and green colors; “parti sapphires” show two or more colors. The only color which sapphire cannot be is red - as red colored corundum is called ruby,[2] another corundum variety.

Trace amounts of elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, copper, or magnesium present during formation are responsible for the color of a sapphire. Chromium impurities in corundum yield a pink hue.

Commonly, natural sapphires are cut and polished into gemstones and worn in jewelry. They also may be created synthetically in laboratories for industrial or decorative purposes in large crystal boules.

Because of the remarkable hardness of sapphires – 9 on the Mohs scale (the third hardest mineral, after diamond at 10 and moissanite at 9.5) – sapphires are also used in some non-ornamental applications, such infrared optical components; high-durability windows; wristwatch crystals and movement bearings; and very thin electronic wafers, which are used as the insulating substrates of very special-purpose solid-state electronics (especially integrated circuits and GaN-based LEDs).

Sapphire is the birthstone for September and the gem of the 5th and 45th anniversaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire

[Swordmaker]

FUD article on whether the entire lens on Apple's iPhone cameras are made of Sapphire (no one ever said they were) or they are just covered with a very thin Sapphire cover. Quote from the article: "tests . . .show that Apple could be using a more cost effective sapphire laminate on top of regular glass." All the sapphire needs to do is protect the lens from ordinary, everyday scratching, not a laboratory grade scratch testing machine. The sapphire cover does that quite well. Properly formulated glass lenses have a higher index of refraction than does Sapphire so are a better choice to make lenses out of, otherwise there would be a lot of high end lenses made from transparent artificial sapphire because it is easy to make. However, there are not any companies that make lenses out of pure sapphire because doped glass, or even some plastics, are a better choice to bend light. — PING!

Apple FUD Article
Ping!

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[Swordmaker]

Incidentally, Apple cannot be doing this to save money. Apple owns all those 240 pound boules left over from the failed company that was attempting to make iPhone 5S screens. . . even the ones that eventually cracked. Hundreds of them. There is enough clear usable sapphire in those boules to make camera lenses for billions of iPhones.

These boules are just lying there, not being used for anything, except some have been repurposed for the upper end Apple Watch crystals which shows they are certainly usable for camera lenses, were sapphire a good lens material, which it isn't.

[Swordmaker]

Lots of very good, science-based comments specifically about how it most likely is NOT sapphire, and what the implications are.

The Verge has changed its story about this article and even the headline. The headline now reads "Apple's iPhone 7 camera lens uses pure sapphire despite test claims" and The Verge has added a retraction after Apple responded to their inquiry.

Update October 5th, 1PM ET: Apple has confirmed to The Verge that the company uses sapphire in its iPhone camera lens. It appears the correct testing conditions weren't adhered to in JerryRigEverything's tests. "Apple confirms the iPhone 7 camera lens is sapphire, and under proper testing conditions achieves the hardness and purity results expected from sapphire," says an Apple spokesperson.

The fact is that Apple uses Sapphire in the cover lenses on its cameras, but the "JerryRigEverything" YouTube testing puts far too much pressure on their scratch tester. Like all very hard materials including diamond, Sapphire is brittle, and their testing rig's hardness point did not scratch the Sapphire cover lens, it cracked it!

The planar sapphire lens that covers the glass lens system on the Apple cameras is there purely for protection and while it is thick enough for environmental scratch protection, it is not thick enough to withstand the pressure of a point contact of a machine deliberately pressing on it. It was not designed for that kind of pressure. Here is a photo of the lenses in a typical iPhone: