PhoneSoap Promises to Sanitize Your Smartphone

In some cases, ignorance truly is bliss. If you were asked to choose which is dirtier, a toilet or a smartphone, which would you pick? If you pick the toilet, you’re assumption, though understandable, is wrong. Phones are definitely germier than toilets — carrying up to 500 times more bacteria than a toilet seat, according to MSNBC. Is there an app for that?

Not yet. But there is a young man with a dream, a prototype and a Kickstarter fund ready to tackle the problem. Wesley LaPorte and his team invented what they call PhoneSoap. The prototype is a box that encases your smartphone and zaps it with UV-C light to make it sanitary. LaPorte elaborates on the PhoneSoap Kickstarter page.

PhoneSoap is a small box that simultaneously charges and sanitizes your cell phone using UV-C light. UV-C light is electromagnetic radiation that’s used in hospitals and clean rooms around the world. This short wavelength of light penetrates the cell wall of the bacteria and disrupts its DNA, effectively killing it. It is 99.9% effective in killing bacteria and viruses.

Best of all, it is completely safe. The UV-C light is only on for 3 to 5 minutes at a time, and there is no heat or liquid involved so there is no risk of damaging your phone. There is a UV-C light on the top and on the bottom of the box so that the UV rays surround your phone for complete sanitization.

At this point, LaPorte has already achieved his funding goal, so we may get to see PhoneSoap in action — which means, germaphobes, that you can breathe a little easier, knowing that a cleaner mobile world is in your future.