We all use our phones as fundamental tools in our day to day lives, and most of us will clean them from time to time. However, cleaning the visible dirt is only half the battle as there is also the microbial “dirt” that is always present on our phones. This can be “cleaned” by the use of anti-bacterial wipes, which are basically a low percentage of ethanol impregnated into a lint-free cloth. It will do some good, but it is still a breeding ground for those nasty little bugs. These are bugs that can easily make you sick and are also commonly found on the toilet seat of public restrooms! Yes, the thing that you handle and place next to your face on the daily is about as dirty as a toilet seat! So how can I clean it without obsessively wiping the phone down every second? Well, the answer comes in the form of Medical grade UV-C lights. But you don’t really want to be exposing yourself to this all the time either do you? This is where the Phone Soap comes into play.
So what is the Phone soap then?
It is an enclosure that you place your phone inside and then as soon as the lid is closed it will start emitting UV light to bathe your phone in. This UV-C light is set at just the correct wavelength that it will kill 99% of most commonly found bugs on your phone. In the space of ten minutes, your phone will bug and bacteria free. This is not new technology – it has been around for years. In fact, it has been utilised in laboratories and medical facilities all over the world for decades. It is a great solution to cleaning your device as it requires no contact that in turn can just move the dirt and bacteria from one surface to another.
The light that the Phone Soap emits is actually harmful to bacteria and it is this that is what actually kills them off and also stops them from breeding, therefore stopping the spread of bacteria on your device. Now, unfortunately, I don’t have access to a lab environment where I can cultivate and grow bacteria to demonstrate this for real. However, the people over at PhoneSoap have put this through lab tests and here s a video showing this below.
In the above video, you can see that the bacteria picked up from various surfaces is then incubated and grown in lab conditions and then sprayed onto phones. One of the phones will then be sanitised via the PhoneSoap while the other will not be. After this, the phone’s surface is imprinted onto Ajar Petri dishes and then the results are shown. If you want to just see the results, then feel free to skip to the crunch point by clicking here. I am very impressed, to be honest.
Another cool feature you may have noticed is that the PhoneSoap has a pass-through hole that will allow you to charge your device while it is being sanitized. The idea behind this is that you pop your phone into the PhoneSoap and plug in your charging cable. When you wake up in the morning and take your phone out, then you have a clean phone; at least for the first few minutes anyway!
Don’t get me wrong, I have to say that going into this review I was a bit sceptical about the actual functionality of this item and that scepticism is still there for me. I am not a lab tech, and I don’t have access to the sort of equipment you would need to perform the actual tests that would prove or disprove the PhoneSoap’s effectiveness requires. For that I will have to rely on other testers opinions. I have found a few videos online that have done more extensive testing and for your ease, I have included a few of these below.
This one stops being relevant after the 5-minute mark so you don’t need to watch it all the way through
For me, these tests show that the PhoneSoap is effective but that the phone will invariably get “bugged” up again after some time, which is par for the course unless of course, you live in a bubble!
The real crux is would I buy one for myself. Well the answer is no I would not, BUT and this is a big one for me at least. I work in a job where I literally handle about 50 to 100 phones a day and god only knows what is on them when they come in. So for that reason, I would actually recommend that my employer gets one of these to use at my place of work. In fact, the actual device I have used for the testing (albeit very limited) is now in place in my workplace for that very reason!
So if you are a germaphobe or just someone who uses your phone in the bathroom (we all do it!), then this may be worth getting one either that or just buy lots of wet wipes! You can buy one from Amazon here and you can also get a wireless version which is coming soon to the UK market. If you are looking to sanitise on a larger scale, then you do so using the beast that is linked here.
You can also look at Sonic Soak, which is the newest evolution in washing technology that utilises ultrasonic cleaning to give you a deeper clean, saved time, water and energy. This comes in a compact package that can be taken anywhere. Sonic Soak generates modulated ultrasonic waves that travel through water to disintegrate dirt and bacteria at the microscopic level while being significantly more gentle than the conventional washing machine and even traditional hand washing.