If your phone hits the ground without a case on it, you wouldn’t be too surprised to see some cracked glass. But what if your phone’s glass cracked just sitting on your desk, with no obvious trauma? That’s what has been happening to some Nexus 6P owners, and they’ve been taking to Reddit and Twitter to show off their newly damaged phones.
This is the first time we’ve seen so many early reports of glass cracking on a Nexus phone, and the new all-metal construction may to be blame. Android Police suggest that a metal body is more likely to crack and expand as a result of changes in air pressure, temperature and humidity. If Huawei didn’t factor this into their design of the phone, an increase in cracks as we’ve been seeing could result.
While the screens and backs of the phones have all variously been listed as cracking, the camera bulge at the top of the phone seems particularly prone to shattering. Reddit user RedHeadedMenace posited the following:
This could be caused by the method they use to temper the glass. I’m by no means an expert, but the method used to temper Gorilla glass involves giving the glass ion baths to strengthen it. The strength comes at a cost though – due to the strong attraction of the glass particles to one another and compression of the whole, the glass develops lines of internal torque and stress, leading to explosive results if the glass is impacted or pressed from the wrong angle.
Because most of the potential damage to your screen comes from the face of the glass, they temper it to resist head on impact, at the cost of durability in sheer impacts. To make up for this, most screens (including the 6P’s) have a very small plastic shock ring between the case and the screen. The visor does not appear to have one of these.
Ergo my theory: If the case exerts any lateral pressure on the visor, it would take only a very small amount of force over a period of time to develop stress fractures, which would then propagate due to the internal forces of the ion infused glass.
Regardless of the cause, this will surely be a worry for Nexus 6P owners. While Google and/or Huawei should be obligated to replace the phones if they cracked due to a manufacturing defect, it might be difficult to prove that the phones weren’t subjected to a drop to cause similar-looking damage.
How is your Nexus 6P looking? Let us know in the comments below!