On that note, an online post by leaker Instant Digital on the Chinese social media platform Weibo implies that Apple is gearing up to make its future iPhone displays more resistant to scratches (via iMore).
The company has already made some strides with the iPhone’s display durability when it introduced the so-called “Ceramic Shield” alongside the launch of the iPhone 12 in 2020. This upgrade did improve the display’s resistance to scratches, but the more significant benefit was a higher resistance to drops, reducing the dreaded web of glass cracks iPhone’s were known for.
According to Instant Digital, this next screen durability upgrade will focus more on scratch resistance, but just how much the glass would be able to withstand scratches is still unclear. That said, the tech giant is allegedly investing “billions on coating equipment in Japan, which has been handed over to China’s supply chain.” If that is true, it is safe to assume we will be seeing the results of those investments in the future.
Speaking of the future, the Weibo post states that the increased scratch resistance most likely won’t be featured on the iPhone 16 coming this year. Instead, the scratch-resistant displays will probably come with the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, which should arrive in 2025.
As for what will make this upgrade possible, the leaker mentions that “the outer glass of the iPhone 17 series will be made into a super-hard AR layer.” AR, in this case, we assume stands for the anti-reflection layer, which leads us to think that Apple might be trying to implement something similar to the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s reflection-free screen, which we tested next to that of the latest iPhone and Pixel models.