Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is the first phone to use Gorilla Glass 5

Despite being made of glass, the Note 7 is looking to be a durable beast as far as everyday use will be concerned. It can plunge as far as five feet down into water and emerge unscathed, thanks to its IP68 certification. You can also drop it to the ground from the same height and the upcoming Galaxy Note 7’s face will likely remain unblemished, thanks to Samsung’s inclusion of Gorilla Glass 5 in the phablet’s build.

Rumors had put Gorilla Glass 5 on the faces of both the Note 7 and the upcoming iPhone 7, and with today’s announcement, Samsung has beat Apple to the punch. During the Note 7 announcement, Samsung confirmed that Gorilla Glass 5 will protect the Note 7’s 5.7-inch sAMOLED display when the handset launches on Aug. 19. Gorilla Glass 5 is Corning’s latest and toughest glass cover for mobile devices. Citing lab tests, the company says phone faces protected by Gorilla Glass 5 have an 80 percent chance of emerging unscathed after falling from heights of up to 1.6 meters of 5.25 feet.

The inclusion of Corning’s latest glass cover might be big news for you if you’re a millennial. A Verizon commissioned KRC Research study recently found that millennials drop their phones about four times each week on average, about twice as often as Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. That same KRC Research study found that about 43 percent of smartphone users considered dropping their handsets into water to be the most embarrassing way to damage their devices. If you feel the same, well the Note 7 and its water resistant build has you covered there too.

Elsewhere in the Note 7, Samsung has installed a microSD card slot so that you can add an extra 256GB of space to the phone’s native 64GB of internal storage. The Android 6.0 Marshmallow device will also deliver a 12 MP rear shooter, 5 MP selfie cam, USB Type C connection, fast charging and wireless charging. For more details on the Note 7, be sure to check out our other hands on coverage. 

So what’s the bigger deal for you: the Note 7’s Gorilla Glass 5 cover, its expandable memory or its water-resistant build?