Kindle Fire Drop and Scratch test

One of the major selling points for Kindle Fire is “gorilla glass” that is supposed to resist scratches and breaking. A few years back I inadvertently “tested” my Kindle 2 and it turned out to be not so scratch resistant (carrying Kindle and keys in the same bag turned out to be a very bad idea). I was very curious about how Kindle Fire would fare in this department. I initially pre-ordered 2 Kinde Fire devices – one to keep and another to disassemble and drop test. iFixIt beat me to the punch when it came to disassembling the device so I decided to skip right to the gorilla glass testing.

This video pretty much speaks for itself, but here’s a recoup of what I tried:

• scratching it with house keys – no effect at all, not even smallest dent
• scratching it with a screwdriver – same as above. Kindle Fire looks as good as new
• scratching it with office knife – same as above. Kindle Fire wins
• drops in various positions from 3 feet onto stone floor – Kindle Fire wins and goes on playing the video
• angled drop from 6 feet – Kindle Fire survives and keeps working
• flat drop from 6 feet – internal LCD screen cracked so we can finally write this one off as broken. However there is still not a dent on the “gorilla glass”
• pound on the screen with a screwdriver and a sharp tool – still not a single dent on the “gorilla glass”

Bottom line is that, it is pretty much safe to carry your Kindle Fire without case or cover in the same bag with pretty much anything without fear of scratching the screen. Kindle Fire is very likely to survive “normal household drops” (from hands when reading, from the table, etc) even if it falls on something as hard as stone. It will probably need to fall in a bad way down the flight of stair for it break. Learn how to open DAT file.

Bottom line is that Kindle Fire is a very sturdy device. I was surprised by the test results as I was sure that it will fail much sooner.