[Captivate Accessories] abenn26:
So Gorilla Glass is pretty good stuff. As I have read through about 20/30 of the posts in this thread no one really has taken a scientific approach to this subject. I say to you community, you will never scratch your gorilla glass with normal care and you are more likely to not scratch it than you are with extreme use. I cannot comment on whether or not all captivates are made equal and I cant speak for the shattering of the glass, only for scratches.

As this will be a longer post, I will bold the points I'm trying to make and you can read the rest if you so feel. With that being said, it never hurts to be safe, screen protectors can help during shattering instances and do protect against the things that can scratch Gorilla Glass

tl:dr

Things that wont scratch gorilla glass

-Keys

-Coins

-Asphalt

-Concrete

-Fingernails

-Teeth

-Actual Gorillas or the musical group the Gorillas

Things that will scratch gorilla glass

-Carbide metal cutting tools

-Extremely hard and sharp steel

-Diamonds, rubys, and sapphires

-igneous rock (volcanic not plutonic)

-Gorillas wielding sharp edges of shattered gorilla glass

First things first is the Mohs scale of hardness. It was developed to test hardness of different metals. Specifically,

"The Mohs scale of mineral hardness characterizes the scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of a harder material to scratch a softer material"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness

Just using this you can see that "glass" has a Mohs hardness rating of 6-7 (refer to the intermediate scale) If you find copper, nickel, magnesium, aluminium, even platinum and steel do not have hardness ratings past 5 with manganese coming in at 6 making it the hardest common metal. The reason that glass is higher on the scale is because it is a ceramic even though it is noncrystalline, which is opposite of most ceramics which are crystalline.

Borsilicate and the slightly stronger (better mechanical properties) pyrex are two forms of very common and cheap, think suuuuuuuuper cheap, glass. Odds are any of the glass around you is one or the other if not something stronger or a plastic like glass. Take your strongest key out of your pocket, reach up and try and scratch that glass, try hard! Scratch? Probably not. You could probably break your key on the glass and not find a scratch. I'd even challenge you to get some gravel from outside, come back inside, and try and scratch the glass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borosilicate_glass

Most keys are made of brass, sometimes nickle plated brass. Other less common key materials are aluminum, nickel-silver, and steel (Not HSS but when the situation requires it, strengthened steel could be used, none of these are the keys on your key chain). So except for steel, your keys are made from relatively, very soft materials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_(lock)

Pennies are mostly zinc, some have different small amounts of copper and nickel. Silver colored coins are a cupro-nickel clad, or an amalgamation of copper and nickel. Golden colored coins are also plated usually with manganese brass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_(United_States_coin)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny

You will never scratch basic glass with these, let alone your gorilla glass screen. It doesnt matter what shape or roughness that your key or coin is, it physically cannot scratch glass if it is made from these materials.

So what could you scratch it with? Remember I mentioned glass being a ceramic? Well harder ceramics could definitely scratch glass, if you refer to the mohs hardness scale you will see that corundum class ceramics, i.e. ruby's sapphire, and diamond family rocks have higher mohs ratings. So for those of you who have nice rings, you could use your rock to scratch your screen.

Gorilla glass is chemically hardened so that it is much more hard than normal glass. I would objectively put it around 7.5-8.5 on the mohs scale as I have rubbed my national championship ring against the screen and the cz's in it have not scratched it yet. This also explains why most rocks that you would find on the ground as well as asphalt and cement will not scratch your screen.

The video that someone posted of the guy rubbing his captivate on the ground was probably a fake. They probably had a screen protector on it and that is what actually scratched, not the screen.

I also have a video to share, the whole page is informative but what yall want to focus on is the cowen s9 video as it also has a gorilla glass screen.

http://anythingbutipod.com/2009/04/glass-screen-durability-test-a-lesson-on-the-mohs-hardness-scale/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxj6gRYwS0&NR=1&feature=fvwp