Desay Beats Apple to the Punch in Offering a Smartphone with a Sapphire Display

dgstorm · Jan 13, 2015

Here's a story that will probably not be very surprising when you read all of the facts. One of Apple's smaller suppliers just beat them to the punch in creating a smartphone with a full sapphire display. A Chinese company named Desay just announced their new smartphone called the Magical Mirror X5, and it's primary "selling" feature is the aforementioned display made entirely of sapphire.

Here are all of the specs:

5 inch 720p HD display protected by sapphire glass
Quad-core MediaTek processor with 1GB of RAM
16GB of internal storage
13MP rear facing camera
5MP front facing camera
2050mAh battery
4G LTE
Android (probably 4.4 KitKat)

As you can see, it is decidedly a "budget" phone, despite the fancy sapphire display. It also comes with a commensurate price of just ¥ 999, ($160 USD). It is highly unlikely this device will ever sell in North American markets at all.

Finally, to be clear, this is NOT the first sapphire display smartphone. That honor goes to a special version of the Huawei Ascend P7, which was a very limited edition model. Regardless, we aren't sure this marketing gimmick makes much sense anymore.

Despite all of the hype from last year regarding sapphire displays possibly coming to the iPhone, it has been shown that the various forms of Gorilla Glass might actually just be better overall. While the sapphire glass is harder and less likely to scratch than Gorilla Glass, it is also a bit more brittle and less flexible. A smartphone with a sapphire glass display is more likely to have a cracked/broken screen from a drop than is one with Gorilla Glass 3 or 4. Which is more relevant to you?

Source: WSJ