You’ve heard of “waterproof” phones, which are few and far between, but have you ever heard of “soap-proof” phones? Well, we’ve got a treat in store for you. Kyocera will sell the first soap-proof smartphone in known history next week, known as the Kyocera Digno Rafre.
In carrier KDDI’s YouTube video, the Kyocera Digno Rafre gets ketchup on it from a family dinner, but the mother takes foam soap, rubs it on her hands, then proceeds to wash the phone. She does, rinsing the phone off (you can see the suds running off the phone into the sink). She dries off the phone, then hands it back to her son at the diner table.
The Kyocera Digno Rafre is soap-proof, but this statement must be qualified. After all, Kyocera says that while foam soap can be used on the device, bar soap should not be used to clean it. We know little else about the Kyocera Digno Rafre, except that it will launch with Japanese carrier KDDI, retail for $460 USD when it launches next week, comes in pink, white, and blue colors, features Asahi’s latest flexible glass known as Dragontrail X glass, and will run on WiMax 2+ networks and 4G LTE.
Soap-proof phones such as the Kyocera Digno Rafre are few indeed, but the phone was designed with the goal of helping people clean their phones and prevent the spread of bacteria from the environment onto their phone and into their mouths — which would make them sick. Our phones go everywhere with us, including medical clinics and hospitals (where germs are abundant), and our sicknesses, coughs, and saliva get on our phones at times when our phones are with us (which makes them dangerous for others to handle as well). Hopefully, phones like the Kyocera Digno Rafre will go beyond foam-soap resistance and include bar-soap resistance as well. At the very least, I’d like my future soap-proof smartphone to be “Dial-soap” resistant.
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