Tech
Is It Time To Buy A UV Phone Sanitizer?
As parts of the country continue to open up after a year of lockdown, more interpersonal interaction is inevitable. If you are not one of the lucky few to be eligible for a vaccine, then of course you should wear a mask when out in public. But wearing a mask does not 100% protect you (or those around you) from COVID-19, so there are other considerations to keep in mind when planning your reentry into the civilized world.
Consider a UV phone sanitizer. These nifty pieces of technology were popular buys at the beginning of the pandemic, but for most people exposure to others was so limited that it was not a particularly good value unless you were a frontline worker. Now you might expect to see people a little more often, so these useful machines are again something to consider.
There are dozens of UV phone sanitizers available on Amazon, but the belle of the ball is the PhoneSoap 3. In addition to ridding your smartphone of 99.99% of bacteria in mere minutes, it also features a USB-C charger so you can clean and power up your phone simultaneously. (The marketing folks at PhoneSoap seem to want to call their device a “UV-C” as a result, but I don’t think that is going to catch on).
The effectiveness of UV radiation in killing harmful microbes is undisputed; it is the same technology used to clean thousands of medical instruments in hospital settings every day. The only question is: Is sanitizing your smartphone necessary?
Perhaps not. It almost certainly wasn’t when the farthest you ventured out of the house each day was to your mailbox. But now that our collective situation may once again approach something resembling normalcy, it is a good time to remember that your phone is one of the dirtiest things in your entire house. Throughout a typical day your phone is exposed to more germs than even your toilet.
With a light finally visible at the end of the tunnel, wouldn’t it be better to be safe than sorry?