The self-sterilizing cellphone
By Ryan Block 
posted Oct 5th 2004 3:45PM
posted Oct 5th 2004 3:45PM
It was laughs the first couple of times Koreans were all into
sterilizing their
cellphones, but now it's getting kind of (read:
extremely) creepy. Now consumers can buy the IM-7400 (which features, to their credit, 100MB of space and a 1.1
megapixel camera) from SK Teletech, the only phone equipped with a single nanometer-thick coating of silver particles
that both attack pathogens and promote deodorization. Deodorization? We had no idea cellstink was such an issue. We're
starting to get the feeling that the first person to come up with a way to make rubber body suits unobtrusive will be
the first Korean trillionaire.
[Via picturephoning]
I hope this technology makes it to the US. As a hospital nurse, I work with many patients with antibiotic-resistant infections. Although I follow proper precautions, I am still paranoid about bringing these germs home. For example, I don't use my work pens at home, I don't wear my work shoes in the house, etc. What does this have to do with anything? Well, I'd like to get a PDA for work and for home. There's tons of nursing and medical software I could load it up with. Now, do I get two cheap PDA's, and use one just for work (the dirty PDA ), and have the other one be the home, or clean PDA? Or do I get one good one for everything(more convenient), and hope that frequent wipedowns with an antibacterial cleansing cloth won't destroy it? That's my dilemma. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that while this technology seems kind of silly, there are legitimate uses for it.
using silver ion compounds in plastic has been around for at least 15 years.
this compound does not kill bacteria. what it does do is deny any environment for virii to grow. therefore it is very good for any sort of hospital setting, where your hands come in contact with scores of virii which will cause you to become ill if you have any sort of prior infection.
asia in particular, not korea by itself, is the home of sars, avian flu, etc. this sort of additional marketing feature is very effective.
i think ryan block's post was opinionated without having to push people into agreeing with it. on the other hand, i find YOUR comment particularly irritating because it sounds like it knows everything and it tells people what they SHOULD be doing. dude (dudette? whatever?), i respect your opinion, so please don't act as if your opinion was fact.
by the way, we have never had SARS or avian flu here in the philippines, so please don't generalize that "asia in particular" is the home of such diseases.
Hey, niji, before you start telling people to do their research, why don't you learn the English language? It's "viruses", not "virii".