Hygiene is something of an important matter these days, at least it should be for most people, especially when we’re constantly touching our smartphones; Flipping your display this way, tapping those apps, inputting those calendar events, and dragging things from every corner of your phone to that all important folder on the homescreen. With all this activity happening on our devices, its safe to say that there is probably a ghastly amount of germs living on the surface of the screen. Think about that for a second, and about all the surfaces you touch and then about how often you use your device right afterwards. If you’re not cringing already then you might be later once you remember where your hands have been.
Thankfully, Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass want to help protect our smartphones in another way, by protecting us from germs. You read that right, Corning’s new version of Gorilla Glass which they just announced at CES, is not only going to be even stronger than before and protect your display from the many types of damages that may occur, it’ll also help actively kill off germs that find themselves living on the surface of your smartphone. With as often as we touch our devices cleanliness is just as important as ever, and we now will start to have a tool on our side to help keep germs at bay.
This new type of antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, has been developed with an ionic silver coating that is intrinsic to the glass itself, so that way it doesn’t wear off like the ionic silver coating that is found in similar germ killing surfaces. This is an important feature for how much we actually interact with our screens, and the feature of this glass is meant to last the life of your device says Corning. All this germ killing power is said to constrain the growth of algae, mold, mildew, fungi, bacteria, and many other forms of germs that you can think of that might find their way onto your devices screen. Corning has yet to mention any sort of timeframe as to when we could expect such devices with this antimicrobial gorilla glass built in, but hopefully we’ll start to see devices with this technology sometime this year. This should make you think twice about hygiene as a whole, and where you set down your smartphone while not in use.