back to article Your phone's cracked screen may one day heal itself, but try not to drop it for now

Smartphones with self-healing displays could be on sale within the next five years, according to the latest predictions from research outfit CCS Insight. In the analyst's published expectations for the technology landscape in 2024 and beyond, it believes that by 2028, we will see displays for smartphones and other consumer …

  1. xyz Silver badge

    Yup...

    Tech review...

    My Android phone is always falling out my pocket, being dropped, knocked off a something etc., has a huge screen crack across it and the bottom of the screen seems to be peeling off and has assorted muck buried under it. Still works though so I'll wait.

    My GF has 2 iphones, both with screen cracks. I think her record is something like 25 mins from package opening to "bugger". I wonder what the world record is? She trained herself on Kindles and is now on #4 which appears to be indestructable.

    My win 8 phone (now resting in a drawer) survived huge abuse without issue.

    Overall, I think new phones need to go to a phone gym and buff up a bit.

    1. Yorick Hunt Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Yup...

      My HTC Touch Pro survived a half-decade of abuse, was even run over by a car and only sustained the tiniest of scratches on the screen (though it did need a replacement battery cover).

      These days you only need to look at your 'phone the wrong way and it cracks.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yup...

        Same with the plastic lens for eyeglasses. Look through them and bam, scratched.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Re: Yup...

      I wonder what the world record is?

      No doubt held by the idiots that wait in line at an Apple store in Australia on launch day only to video themselves having a "drop test" on the sidewalk outside, hoping the views they get will make more than the $1000 they paid.

  2. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

    Self repairing screens? Even when some clever boffin has invented the technology, it won't be used on phones - it would remove one of the incentives to upgrade.

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Oh, you cynic!

  3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
    Joke

    rumor among Apple followers that the igizmo maker is on the brink of delivering a device with a self-healing screen

    The iPhone 15 was a near miss, it seems to be self-heating. One little letter...

  4. Lee D Silver badge

    20-something years of owning a mobile, keeping it in my pocket every single day with metal keys, never using a screen protector, dropping it down things like concrete staircases, and not once ever scratching or cracking a screen.

    I honestly don't know what junk you're buying and/or what kind of childish "care" you're taking of your expensive phones to ever have cracked them short of running the damn things over.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The one cracked screen in my household was due to a teenager throwing a strop (and a phone...) We tend to get through a lot of scratched and cracked screen protectors in normal use though...

      1. MiguelC Silver badge

        I've had tiny scratches on the screen of my phones, but never a cracked screen.

        I once lent a used phone to my eldest daughter while her own was in the shop to repair the touch part of the touchscreen. She managed to break the screen the 2nd day she used it and I cannot understand how - I had dropped it several times but the rubber case always seemed to work as intended.

        Phones may just dislike being used by teenagers and choose to end their life early...

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      This. I'm a bit of a klutz, but on one side there's a screen protector and on the other side it's a sort of rubbery case. I'm well aware that phones these days are some tech shoved in between two layers of glass. And I've had them fall out of pockets, off tables, and out of hand and each time is a stopped heart moment (*), but so far in some fifteen years of owning these fragile things, no shattered screen (or worse).

      * - The phone itself I'm not overly bothered with. What bothers me is the enormous hassle of upgrading to a new phone, installing all my goodies and the data where I expect it to be, and finding "improvements" to Android have broken things (like that nice pop up Translate button; now according to Google it must always be there or always not, FFS). There's a reason why the phone I take with my is my old S9 with screen burn in and an increasingly naff battery... The newer phone? It's mostly used for Netflix etc.

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      I have to concur with this. When I first got a smartphone with the shatterable screen,, I protected it because I'd seen others with cracked screens. When I dropped it, I was always careful to check for damage to the screen protector, which there wasn't. Eventually, I got a different phone and didn't bother with the protector, and I'm no longer so careful to avoid dropping it. I can easily imagine the screen breaking if I threw it, but I'm not going to and nor is anyone else I know. I have to ask if other people just have different devices that coincidentally are more fragile than mine or if they've found some way of causing damage that has not happened to me all the way through the past decade.

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        Bloke at work opened his locker. His phone tumbled out, fell about a metre and a third, landed flat on a concrete floor. Instant death, both sides shattered like a windscreen and not enough of the screen hardware intact to display anything other than a few odd patches of flickery junk.

        I've also noticed a fair few cracked screens on phones at work, but the screen and the touch sensing still works.

        Maybe it depends on how it lands?

    4. DS999 Silver badge

      I used to see people with cracked screens ALL THE TIME

      On both iPhones and Androids, but I rarely see them now. I think that's a combination of screens being a lot more durable than they were 10 years ago, and klutzes buying better quality cases.

      I've never had a case on any of my iPhones, and while I've dropped them on concrete and got a scuff mark on the corner or whatever never any broken glass. Of course by posting this I've probably doomed myself to accidentally dropping it this weekend and watching it bounce off the curb and skitter into the middle of the street where it is run over by a passing bus!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A guy in a shopping mall was trying to sell me a screen protector.

    He demonstrated it by hammering a nail into a block of wood using his iphone.

    I told him I didn't need one because I already had a hammer.

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      Well, at least he found a use-case for an iPhone.

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    CCS Insight

    So, Gartner now has a little brother ?

  7. Zebo-the-Fat

    I have never ever cracked a screen, but all my phones have been kept in cases to protect them, but I have watched people with iphones "spinning" them on a table and thought "you paid a lot for that, why are you not looking after it?"

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