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Note the report's internals are careful to separate screen from glass; the back is glass, the front is a glass screen. The screens are cracking at a higher rate.

Personally, I'm quite sure it's NOT Gorilla Glass on the phone; Corning's never said so, and Apple has never stated so (Jobs simply said that Apple developed some new glass for the use). Gorilla Glass can take a huge amount of abuse. And the iPhone 4 cannot take what's being shown there.

It's a combination of a stronger glass that Apple bought somewhere - a glass that is more brittle, however - and the all-metal sides and less shock-mounting used. A downgrade all-around, and actual real-world results are proving it out.

Over a 2 year span, extrapolating these numbers, and we'd see a 30% screen break rate for the iPhone 4 - that's a HUGE failure rate over 2 years. Clearly there's a problem, and Apple better get on it to fix it (along with the antenna, and proximity sensor, and...)

> Note the report's internals are careful to separate screen from glass; the back is glass, the front is a glass screen. The screens are cracking at a higher rate.

Let's see... the article states, for the iPhone4:

"...at least a quarter of the broken glass claims involved the back screen..."

So consider this. 3.9% overall breakage rate for the iPhone4, of which "at least a quarter" (say 1%) were the back side. So roughly speaking, starting with the 2.1% rate from the iPhone3GS, add that 1% due to the back side, and you have 3.1%. But the iPhone4 rate is 3.9%, a difference of 0.8%.

So I would say, the additional rate of breakage -- after compensating for the back side -- which can be said to be due to increased fragility, is more like 0.8%. And that percentage, compared to the 2.1%, is an increase of 38%, less than half of the 82% increase trumpeted in the article.

I think that even 38% is significant enough to warrant a close look at how and why it's happening and correct it. There's no need to inflate the figures by combining apples and oranges, front and back, in an assessment of the material strength.

Of course, the 82% figure still stands for the overall device breakage rate, no argument.

> Personally, I'm quite sure it's NOT Gorilla Glass on the phone; Corning's never said so, and Apple has never stated so (Jobs simply said that Apple developed some new glass for the use).

Yeah, but that's neither here nor there -- Apple very rarely discloses anything about their vendors, and vendor contracts with Apple require complete secrecy. Surely you don't expect Corning to say something that would breach their contract with Apple.

> Gorilla Glass can take a huge amount of abuse. And the iPhone 4 cannot take what's being shown there.

Has someone done a similar calibrated side-by-side comparison of those tests, using real Corning Gorilla Glass, and a piece of glass screen from an iPhone4? (Same thickness, shape, etc. of course.)

> It's a combination of a stronger glass that Apple bought somewhere - a glass that is more brittle, however - and the all-metal sides and less shock-mounting used. A downgrade all-around, and actual real-world results are proving it out.

I readily agree that the glass/metal arrangement on the iPhone4 sorta worried me initially, and continues to do so. My cheap stupidphone takes a lot of abuse daily, and while my iPod also seems to take similar abuse well, it's got a metal back.

> Over a 2 year span, extrapolating these numbers, and we'd see a 30% screen break rate for the iPhone 4 - that's a HUGE failure rate over 2 years. Clearly there's a problem, and Apple better get on it to fix it (along with the antenna, and proximity sensor, and...)

One thing you have to credit Apple for, is that they have a pretty good track record of correcting their design errors. Sometimes it only changes the product a little; sometimes it makes the product morph or even disappear.

The pro-Apple people who breathlessly make prognostications about possible future Apple products, are only slightly less annoying than the anti-Apple people who breathlessly declare that Apple is failing left and right before they've even come out with a response. Both groups sound like they're on the brink of climax; I think they spend too much time with one hand on their keyboard and the other hand on their... mouse.

I prefer to wait for the iPhone5, or at least the iPhone4.1, before I make a judgment of how Apple responded to these issues.