Corning has unveiled Gorilla Glass 4, a new and improved version of the Gorilla Glass that, when it adorns the front of your new smartphone or phablet, can survive drops of 1 meter onto a rough, hard floor 80% of the time. According to Corning, this new toughened glass is “up to” two times better at surviving falls than Gorilla Glass 3, which probably covers the front of your current smartphone. As part of the announcement, Corning also had some things to say about sapphire glass. Read on for more details.

For the most part, Gorilla Glass 4 is identical to Gorilla Glass 3. It’s the same thickness (0.4 millimeters), same optical properties, and much the same scratch resistance. For this iteration, it seems Corning focused entirely on fixing one of the greatest problems that plagues society today: Dropped phones and broken displays.

To this end, Corning simply carried out a ton of drop tests. The company found that dropping a dummy device onto 180-grit sandpaper was the best approximation for the rough roads, sidewalks, and parking lots that most people drop their phones on — and then proceeded to use a drop-test machine to drop the dummy device from a height of 1 meter (3.3 feet) over and over again. After every round of drop tests, Corning’s engineers would examine the results and formulate a new version of Gorilla Glass, until eventually they arrived at Gorilla Glass 4. The new cover glass, according to Corning, can survive a flat drop on its face 80% of the time — which is up to two times better than before.

Obviously, a 1-meter drop on its face isn’t the only way to break a smartphone — but as far as the cover glass is concerned, it’s the toughest scenario to mitigate against, and so it made sense for Corning to focus on it. Surviving corner drops (which are also very common), or other screen-smashing scenarios, is usually down to how the device is made — and how the cover glass is bonded/attached to the device — rather than just the toughness of the Gorilla Glass.

As part of the Gorilla Glass 4 unveil, it seems Corning exec Cliff Hund also took the opportunity to take a few jabs at one of its few competitors in the space: sapphire glass. As you probably know, sapphire is about as scratch resistant as it gets, which is why it’s used on wristwatches, and the cover glass for the rear camera on Apple’s iPhone 6. Hund agrees that sapphire is very scratch-resistant — but over time, microscopic abrasion builds up and makes it more brittle and likely to shatter in a fall. Hund also reaffirmed that we already knew: That sapphire is very energy inefficient (and thus expensive) to make, and that aluminosilicate glass (such as Gorilla Glass) has better optical properties. It is probably a combination of these last two factors, plus a healthy measure of inexperience and overconfidence, that caused the breakdown and bankruptcy of GT Advanced Technologies, Apple’s sapphire producer.