If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that Corning will bring something awesome to CES. Year after year, the company somehow manages to develop glass that’s thinner, lighter, and stronger than ever before. But this year they unveiled something new, exciting, and entirely different than what we’re used to seeing. Instead of developing something stronger, Corning created glass that literally murders the germs infecting your smartphone.
Considering the fact that very few people ever think (or dare) to sanitize them, smartphones are generally pretty filthy. By some estimates, they’re dirtier than your average public toilet seat, and Corning aims to fix that.
The company’s latest version of Gorilla Glass is imbued with millions of tiny ionic silver particles, which collectively serve as natural antibacterial agent. According to Corning, the glass passively inhibits 99.9 precent of fungi, bacteria, mold, and mildew from making their home on your screen.
In addition to the silver-studded microbe-killing glass, Corning also took time to unveil a new anti-reflective coating that can stand up to abrasives like glass and steel wool. But unfortunately, these two don’t play well together at this point in time. So until Corning works out the kinks in the recipe, phone manufacturers will have to choose one or their other.
