Which is better, ceramics or glass?

When we look at the evaluation of various mobile phones, we often pay attention to the hardware configuration, appearance design, camera function, endurance and so on, but it is easy to ignore the materials used in the body of the mobile phone.

In fact, the material of the fuselage has a great influence on the mobile phone itself. Today, Bian Xiao will share this topic with you.

At present, there are four common mobile phone body materials: plastic, metal, glass and ceramics.

These four different materials have their own characteristics. Let me introduce them to you respectively.

plastic

Plastics have been widely used since the birth of mobile phones, and there are many kinds of plastics. Polycarbonate is the most commonly used mobile phone body. Polycarbonate is not only used to make mobile phone fuselage, but also widely used in medical, automobile, building materials and other fields. Non-toxic and tasteless, easy to process, so it becomes an ideal material for mobile phone body.

Advantages:

It is cheap, easy to process, good in dyeability, not easy to deform and does not block signals.

Disadvantages:

Poor heat dissipation, wear resistance and poor hand feeling.

Because the plastic body has a sense of cheapness (Samsung used to use plastic body, which was ridiculed as "Wannian Plastic"), there are fewer and fewer mobile phones using plastic body at present, especially in flagship machine, which basically abandoned the plastic body and only used low-end thousand yuan mobile phones.

glass

IPhone 4 is the most classic iPhone in the minds of many fruit fans. One of the reasons is that it is the first to use glass as the fuselage. This innovation stood out in a plastic mobile phone at that time.

Advantages:

Beautiful, feel good, scratch-resistant, easy to dye, do not block the signal.

Disadvantages:

Fragile, difficult to process, poor heat dissipation

The biggest problem of glass material is that it is too fragile, so iPhone 4 adopts double-sided glass and metal middle frame, and later mobile phones have imitated this design. However, this does not solve the fragile problem, but also destroys the integrity of the fuselage, which is not an ideal choice. Another feature of glass is that it is easy to become a "fingerprint collector".

metal

Because glass is fragile, difficult to process and high in cost, the industry urgently needs another material, so the most popular metal material comes into being.

Like plastic, there are many kinds of metals used as fuselage, the most common ones are aluminum alloy and stainless steel. The earliest use of all-metal fuselage is HTC M7.

Advantages:

Low cost, high material strength, good hand feeling and good heat dissipation.

Disadvantages:

Easy to deform, poor dyeing, easy to scratch, too heavy, blocking the signal.

Metal has become the most popular material at present, because it feels like glass and is more resistant to falling than glass. However, the biggest disadvantage of metal is electromagnetic shielding, so mobile phones made of metal often adopt three-stage design with two antennas embedded, which destroys the overall sense of mobile phone design and is ugly.

In addition, mobile phones made of metal have poor dyeability and are easy to fade, which will be ugly after being used for a long time.

Pottery and porcelain

Ceramic is a new fuselage material. Huawei P7 was first used in mobile phones, but its attention was not high. Later, after the use and promotion of Xiaomi 5 and Xiaomi Mix, ceramic materials were sought after.

In fact, the ceramics used in mobile phone body are different from those used in daily life. The ceramics used in the fuselage are actually composite materials, such as yttrium stabilized zirconia.

Advantages:

Beautiful, feel good, hardness.

Disadvantages:

High cost, difficult processing, electromagnetic shielding and heavy weight.

Generally speaking, ceramics are similar to glass, although they are not as easily broken as glass, but they are still much worse than metals in terms of fall resistance. In addition, the processing of ceramics is difficult, the cost is too high, and it is difficult to popularize.

In addition to the above four commonly used materials, there are actually some materials used in mobile phones, such as bamboo, wood, rubber, leather, carbon fiber and so on.

Bamboo and wood

Bamboo and wood are common in our daily life, but they are rarely used in mobile phones. Moto X uses bamboo as the back cover, and Xiaomi 4 also has a solid wood version.

Bamboo feels good, but it is complicated to process and easy to deform. Another point is that it is too waterproof. All these are doomed that bamboo and wood can not be the general choice of mobile phone body materials, and generally appear in customized and limited editions.

leather

Leather is also a rare material. The mobile phone with leather body looks good and feels good, but it is not scratch-resistant, easy to wear and wrinkle, and its practicality is not high. Vertu, a local mobile phone brand, made a mobile phone with a leather body.

rubber

Rubber is the most commonly used material for mobile phone case, but it is rare to use it directly on mobile phone body. The reason is simple: it is too thick and ugly, but some mobile phones with three-proof performance will also use rubber bodies to prevent dust, water and falls. Obviously, this material is not suitable for the widespread use of ordinary mobile phones.

What other materials may appear on the mobile phone in the future?

Carbon fiber, liquid metal, graphene, etc. Manufacturers are trying, but these new materials are facing the problems of cost and processing technology, so it is difficult to popularize them in a short time.