Those greasy messy paw prints on your device’s display? They harbour germs! Lots of them.
How many times in a day do you touch the screen on your smartphone? With the touchscreens on our gadgets being the primary points of interaction between us and the entire world today, they are also some of the best germ carriers alongside the underside of your toilet seat, door handles, supermarket carts and railings. I still don’t know why the makers of Dettol and other notable disinfectants haven’t provided outright solutions specific to the touchscreen yet. While they sleep on the job, someone else has stepped in to take charge.
That someone is none other than the maker of the protective glass coating on your smartphone (no, not you Infinix Hot users, sorry), Corning. Corning’s Gorilla Glass brand is associated with protection on smartphones. While we haven’t reached to a point where they can guarantee you a fully shatterproof device, they are trying as evidenced by their latest product, the Gorilla Glass 4 that you can find on any latest high end flagship device. Like Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 or the Galaxy S6/S6 Edge. To take that protection mandate a step further, Corning announced an interesting product early last year: antimicrobial Gorilla Glass.
Not all of us are Biology buffs so I’ll let you in on what that simply means: an antimicrobial is an agent that kills microorganisms or inhibits their growth. Yup, I Googled that up as well. This unique Gorilla Glass though developed some time back, it had never hit the market but now it has. Thanks to ZTE’s newest smartphone, Axon, you can now find this antimicrobial glass panel on the market. Well, at least if you live in China or some of the other markets that ZTE currently has a keen eye on like the United States and India if it ever gets the device out of its home turf. Or just hold out till someone else thinks that protection from stain causing bacteria is that important.
How does that work?
Silver ions known to have antibacterial properties are infused with chemically-strengthened Gorilla Glass. It is these ions that provide the extra level of protection as they kill of any germs on the display surface of the phone. Corning quotes a 99.99% figure so it’s not like they’ve figured out how to do away with that legendary 0.01% 🙂
There’s this YouTube clip you can watch to brush up on that in case you’re still floating:
