A NEW Sapphire Smartphone?! - Ultra Rugged or Ultra Premium? By JerryRigEverything

Today in front of us we have a phone with what claims to be a sapphire screen. This is a Duraforce Ultra 5G. Sapphire screens are incredibly rare and incredible scratch resistant, with a hardness level right up there next to diamonds. So if it's true and this phone does indeed have a sapphire display, it means it's one of the most durable and protected phones right out of the box on the planet. It should be very interesting because protection is a good thing – both physically and online. Huge thanks to Bitdefender for sponsoring this video.

Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader, delivering best in class prevention, protection, and response solutions worldwide. Bitdefender offers protection and privacy without compromising your device's performance. For as little as $3.34 a month, you get ransomware protection, webcam protection, microphone protection, and even parental controls, which includes screen time limits on different devices. The parental controls can work because Bitdefender works on multiple devices simultaneously, including PC's, Mac, IOS, and Android. Bitdefender also comes with a VPN and monitors online threats in real time.

And to sweeten the whole deal, new users get a 4 month trial of Bitdefender Total Security with the link down in the description. Protection is a good thing, and it's always better to have it before you need it, so I'll leave that link down below. People who are a fan of protection are probably going to really love this sapphire covered phone, if it really is indeed covered by sapphire. There's only one way to find out for sure. Let's get started.

The Duraforce Ultra 5G with a sapphire shield is made by Kyocera. Kyocera's one of the OG's making rugged phones for the last 20 years. We've only seen a few sapphire screen smartphones in the past, notably, the HTC U Ultra Sapphire Edition and Kyocera's older sibling, the Duraforce Pro 2 released back in 2018. And, of course, Apple has tried making a sapphire watch and sapphire camera lenses, but their sapphire is more of a marketing than reality situation. This Ultra is definitely a rugged beefy looking phone, with kind of a builtin protective armor, thicker than even my own smartphone inside of dbrand's grip case.

It's a tank, which is what we would expect from a phone that wants to be the world's most durable. Kyocera claims that this is ultra rugged, which means that it's even more rugged than regular rugged, and a sapphire screen would definitely help take it to the next level. I have a set of Mohs picks which tell us where different materials fall on Mohs scale of hardness. Plastic, like Samsung's folding phones, would start scratching at a level 2 or 3. Glass phones, like the majority of smartphones on the market these days, would scratch at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7.

When we get to level 6 and 7, however, we see no visible markings on the display of the Duraforce Ultra. It still looks like a brand new phone right out of the box. Incredibly impressive. It's only when we get to level 8 that we do start seeing scratches, with deeper grooves at a level 9... levels on the Mohs scale of hardness that would normally just destroy a display.

The Duraforce Ultra 5G is indeed made from sapphire crystal, and unscratchable to nearly everything except diamonds. Speaking of which, the Mohs scale of hardness isn't the only way to verify sapphire. Here we have a diamond selector tool that's able to tell the difference between crystals and noncrystals since they have different thermal properties. For example, my wife's wedding ring, which I'm borrowing for a minute, registers as a gemstone. And if we test the display of the Duraforce Ultra, it also registers as a gemstone.

But when I go to test the display of my own smartphone, it does not register as a gemstone since it's just made with tempered glass and nothing special. Thumbs up for science. I'm definitely not recommending that you propose with a Duraforce Ultra, but scientifically it's pretty similar to a wedding ring. We'll talk more about sapphire in a minute. Also, don't let me lose my wife's ring or I'm going to be in big trouble.

There is an 8 megapixel front facing camera tucked under the sapphire display, along with a plastic earpiece, and what looks like a large plastic speaker grill down near the bottom that is solidly attached to the phone. And, of course, we have some very thick textured plastic sides, and large rubber bumpers on each of the 4 corners. This thing is specifically designed to withstand 5 foot drops onto concrete. There is a plastic programmable button on the right side, along with a SIM card tray with expandable memory SD card slot. Then we have the scratchable power button which is a fingerprint scanner combo.

And up top we have another bright orange programmable button. This is supposed to be used for emergency SOS calls, but can be set to do other things if you're not living your life on the edge. And here underneath this watertight flap we find our good buddy, the headphone jack. This phone has everything. Going down the left side we have volume buttons, as well as a push to talk walkie talkie button thing.

Then finally, down here at the bottom of the phone underneath another watertight flap, we get the USB-C charging port. The Duraforce Ultra is IP68 water resistant and is one of the only manufacturers that I know of that includes water damage in it's 2 year warranty. Everyone else, like Apple and Samsung, would leave you hanging if your phone gets wet, but Kyocera is right there with you. Kyocera even has an underwater camera mode. It's like they're just begging you to get your phone wet.

The gold contacts on the backside are for docking accessories. Then we have the dual flash, along with a Time of Flight depth camera used for auto focus. In the center we have the 16 megapixel wide angle camera. And on the right side we have the main 24 megapixel sensor, all covered by more sapphire. For reference, the lens coverings on my own camera is just made from glass.

Kyocera has spared no expense. You'd have to have a pocket full of diamonds to scratch up the display or the camera lens. And if you do have a pocket full of diamonds, I'd want to know why you have a pocket full of diamonds. One of the reasons sapphire displays are so rare is because of how hard it is to create. Sapphire is grown in huge furnaces at over 2,000 degrees celsius for over 2 weeks, with constant helium gas running through the crucible.

After it's cooked you get a cylinder called a boule, which can then be cut into rectangular blocks that are used for cell phone screens or watches. Instead of drawing it on plastic though, I could just show you. This is a super heavy pure sapphire brick cut from one of the basketball size boules. It's worth about $1,000, and obviously smartphone screens are quite a bit thinner than this, so it would still need to be cut into thin slices... like really expensive cheese that probably doesn't taste very good.

And since sapphire is so hard and scratch resistant, the whole process is very expensive and very difficult, which is why most manufacturers haven't attempted it. And some manufacturers, like Apple, just make impure knockoffs. Cooking crystal at high temperature for weeks is pretty awesome science. Speaking of high temperatures, the Duraforce Ultra is using a 5.4 inch 1080p IPS liquid crystal display. The pixels start to go black and turn off after about 30 seconds under the heat from my lighter, but after the heat is removed they do come back to life and make a full recovery.

Lastly, the fingerprint reader. It's right where I like it – on the power button. This phone is designed to be used with gloves, but of course, the scanner does need contact with a bare fingerprint in order to function. If the scanner is ever scratched up, which would be hard to do considering the phone's shape, it will stop working though. But that does feel a little nit picky since the rest of the phone can survive near everything... except maybe a trip through a blender made of diamonds.

A bend test even feels unnecessary at this point since I'd have to drive it over with a tank to cause any real damage. But like we all could have guessed, there is no flex, kinks, cracks or damage of any kind to the phone when bent from the back or the front. I could probably just skip testing any more phones this year since this guy pretty much just won The Most Durable Phone of 2021 award. It's a pretty amazing device. Nice work, Kyocera.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with next. Do you want sapphire on your next phone? Let me know down in the comments. I'm going to go give my wife back her ring cuz happy wife, happy life. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter.

And thanks a ton for watching, I'll see you around.

Source : JerryRigEverything