Don’t think too much about it, but your cellphone is really dirty. Like, really, really dirty. Like, dirtier than a toilet seat dirty. But it’s all going to be ok because now, you can purchase a phone that is not only water resistant, but actually washable! Germophobes everywhere, rejoice.
Japanese company Kyocera is set up to sell the Digno Rafre, the world’s first soap-proof smartphone that you can rinse at the end of the day, because you’re not the only thing in your life that needs a shower when all is said and done.
The super-clean, or cleanable, Digno Rafre will be made available to the Japanese market this coming week. Sadly, Americans, it’s not crossing the ocean — the Wall Street Journal reports that “Kyocera doesn’t have plans to market the Digno Rafre overseas.” But Japanese consumers can get their hands on one of these new gadgets for around $460, choosing from one of three (clean) colors: white, pink, and navy.
The phone, which will run Android 5.1 (Lollipop) will be 10.1 mm thick and have a 5-inch, 720p display with a 13-megapixel camera. It’s unclear still how long its 3,000mAh battery will last, but you can rest assured that you can use your phone even when it’s wet, thanks to its special touch screen. And because the Digno Rafre will feature one of Kyocera’s smart sonic receivers, you don’t have to worry about damaging your phone speakers when you give it a bath.
While users will have to be cautious about the type of soap they use to clean their devices (foam soap only, please — bar soap is bad), the ability to wash your phone may work wonders in terms of all the nasty fecal contamination that reports have found on randomly selected mobile devices.
But as disgusting as all of this sounds, experts note that your cellphone isn’t really getting you sick, despite being a breeding ground for bacteria. “To put it in perspective, smartphones are not a major source of hand contamination and a source of infection,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville told ABC News in June. Still, the physician notes, “every little thing helps.”
It may be time to get a new phone … and take a trip to Japan.