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Many people opt to slip a screen protector onto their smartphone as a way to keep it safe from chips and scratches, but this sheet of glass is nowhere near as fragile as you might think.

Thanks to a technology developed by glass manufacturer Corning called ‘Gorilla Glass’, the screen is usually the toughest part of a smartphone, at least when it comes to resisting direct impact.

Dropping a smartphone so that the corner or edge of its screen strikes a hard surface can still cause the glass to crack or shatter though, as many iPhone 4 owners will know…

To show just how touch the Corning Gorilla Glass screen is on its new Lumia 900 Windows Phone 7 smartphone, Nokia filmed a short test in its ‘hardware validation lab’. Don’t try this at home…

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[Nokia]