Your Next Smartphone Screen Will Be Able to Disinfect Itself

Your phone is filthy. Anything that’s getting rubbed by your grimy little fingers on a ridiculously regular basis is going to be far from pristine. But Corning can help. Its newest revision of Gorilla Glass is not only ridiculously resilient, it also kills pesky germs all by itself.

Corning discussed its upcoming display tech at the MIT Mobile Technology Summit, and it sounds incredible. The anti-microbial coating being used on the new glass — a first for the display industry — can kill virtually all nasty microbes on the screen’s surface over a course of two hours. It’s not instantaneous, but it’s way better than having a pocket petri dish.

And that’s not all, either. Corning is also whipping up a new transparency treatment that will make the next revision of Gorilla Glass tens of times more transparent than purified water.