Reports issued in the past show that the average mobile phone contains 18 times the level of harmful bacteria as the flush lever in a mens public toilet. Whatever report you may read, it is clear that a mobile phone is far from clean. Corning, famous for their Gorilla glass are developing antimicrobial glass to kill the germs on your phones display.

The announcement by Jeff Evenson, Corning's senior vice president came at the MIT Technology Review's Mobile Summit in San Francisco. He said that the new glass will be able to kill both drug resistant bacteria and drug resistant viruses. Corning had initially designed the glass for the health care industry but have since expanded its adoption to the consumer industry.

Evenson did not detail exactly how the glass works to kill bacteria and viruses, but he highlighted some test results. The lab experiment placed the E. Coli bacteria on regular glass and on antimicrobial glass. The regular glass held the E. Coli bacteria over time, but the antimicrobial glass slowly killed the bacteria, within 2 hours.

Evenson said that there will be at least one consumer device using the product within the next two years. We would expect this will be adopted into tablet computers as well over the coming years.

Kitguru says: A great move and one that many people will welcome.

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