But if the first debate for president streamed live in virtual reality is any guide, it’s doubtful that this burgeoning technology will have much impact on politics whatsoever.

On Tuesday night, NCC partnered with virtual reality startup NextVR to make the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas available in real time in virtual reality to audiences anywhere, as long as they had a Samsung Gear VR headset.

If political debates don’t usually excite you, this experience probably wouldn’t have either, unless, of course, you do actually happen to be into watching five barely recognizable candidates face off for two hours through an over-heating Samsung smartphone held inches from your face by an awkward-looking, heavy headset made by the Korean electronics giant.

This was supposed to be one of the big splashes that pushed virtual reality beyond gaming and into the mainstream. But that’s not how it will likely go down.

To be sure, after more than two decades of little more than talk, VR is having its day in the sun. Smartphone makers such as Samsung and HTC plan to release VR devices this holiday season. Sony and Facebook have their own devices in the works for 2016, when industry watcher Juniper Research expects about 3 million headsets to be sold. By 2020, Juniper expects that number to hit 30 million.

At New York based glass-maker Corning, researchers are working on ways to make smartphone screens stronger. Corning manufactures the touchscreen glass for smartphones by leading brands like Apple and Samsung. Screens are tested to see how they respond to pressure, to being dropped and to falling objects. The researchers even test how phones fare when they bump against keys, coins and other items inside users’ pockets and purses.

“Devices are getting thinner. They’re getting larger. They’re getting potentially more massive. They have shaped-cover glass. They have curved-cover glass. And so all of that puts higher stresses on the cover glass during things like drop events,” says Corning research manager Joshua Jacobs.

Squaretrade, an insurance company for electronic devices, also carries out its own tests. More than half of its phone claims are for cracked screens. The latest phones from the two leading phone makers – Apple’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge Plus – mix zinc into the aluminium frames for improved strength. The displays also use ion-strengthened glass. But the risk zero simply doesn’t exist.

“Well all I can tell is from history, everything they’ve done has clearly increased the strength of phones but people keep breaking them,” says Squaretrade co-founder and executive chairman Steve Abernethy.

The aim is to combine modern technology with a stylist’s expert knowledge to reduce the time it takes to chose an item.

“The technology itself is actually looking at so many points, 140 points of our body, and this information tells you precisely what your size is so that allows you to actually better understand: Okay, with this information, which we called the size ID, shape ID, you will be able to determine what your size is and you will also be able to know what size you are with what brand,” says Lui Tong, General Manager of Private Shop Limited.

But there are privacy implications to collecting such personal data. The shop says all the digital images taken of customers are deleted after the scan. Measurements will only be kept in the company’s database for future purchases if the customer gives her consent.