Nippon Electric wants to see invisible glass on smartphones

by Alistair Lowe on 4 October 2012, 11:00

You may be wondering from the title, is it actually possible to see invisible glass? And even if so, what exactly is invisible glass?

It is the latest technology from Nippon Electric Glass, which offers much of the anti-reflective properties of a matte display, whilst providing the finish and light-dispersing qualities of a glossy panel, which bolster colour intensity and contrast. The technology isn't perfect and reflections are possible, however there's a much greater chance that you might walk into a window pane made from this stuff than the regular old glossy glass that we're used to.

Nippon Electric Glass Invisible Glass

The glass tech can currently be found protecting art pieces and camera sensor covers, however it's the hopes of Nippon Electric Glass that this product will eventually find its way onto smartphone displays, which would no doubt result in a very appealing display. We suspect one big hurdle the firm will have to jump is that of strength; however the technology involves the application of dual-sided external coatings (30, to be precise) and so perhaps teaming up with a firm such as Corning wouldn't be a bad idea.

NEG Invisible Glass

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Quick typo i spotted

which would no-bout result in

Looks like interesting stuff, anything to help get better visibility on smartphones in daylight is a big move for technology.

This kind of thing fascinates me. You look at a piece of technology, say the Galaxy S3 for example, and wonder to yourself “what on earth ca they do to improve the hardware for an S4?”

And then you start to reports of little things like really awesome glass, new thinner higher density lower power and brighter screens (like the 5" 1080p screen Sharp have been showing), new more efficient and significantly faster memory modules (like Samsung announced recently) and you soon realise the next round of portable and handheld releases really will be another jump up from where we are.

All the little technology improvements soon add up to something significant over the space of 6-9 months.

It's all about marginal gains isn't it? Happens everywhere - take GB cycling for example, all through the Olympics Dave Brailsford was banging on about “Marginal Gains” ie improving a little bit here, and a little bit there and all of a sudden, you put them all together and you've got a squad that can win nearly everything on 2 wheels at the Olympics, straight after winning the Tour de France…. it's the same with tech. Get a little improvement in the screen here, a slightly faster memory module there and in a few months, the little things add up to a massive leap in performance.