If this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s how dry and cracked my hands can get from the constant use of sanitizer. We wash or sanitize our hands after using the shopping cart in the supermarket, pushing the buttons in the elevators, even touching a faucet… Still, there is always the question haunting us: Did I do enough to eliminate the risk of contamination after touching all these suspicious surfaces? The pandemic made every one of us a bit of a germophobe ( I personally think this is an unexpected benefit of the COVID-19 pandemic), people have much stronger hygiene awareness than ever before! There are a lot of hand sanitizers on the market now, some of them are really convenient and effective, but we pretty much need to use them non-stop to keep our hands clean. Is there a better hygiene solution?
As we are constantly using our phones every day, from the moment we open our eyes till we go to sleep, it would be absolutely brilliant if there’s a way to use our phones as a disinfecting tool! V-Go, an anti-microbial UVC LED phone case, makes that idea come true – combining portability with practicability.
After using the V-Go for a while, I absolutely fell in love with this little gadget. It’s well-padded and stylish for being a phone case, indeed slightly heavier than my old phone case, but I got used to the weight within a day. The texture of the material also helps a lot here, it feels smooth and premium in your hands as well as being anti-slippery. When it comes to its core function, it takes no effort to use! V-Go has been tested and proven by UC Davis, it can easily clean surfaces and limit exposure to harmful microbes wherever you go. Just make sure that you cover the whole thing when sanitizing a surface, you can keep it parallel to the surface at a vertical optimal distance of 0.75 to 1.5 inches and sweep in a slow 1-2 second motion, which can be done within seconds once you are accustomed to it.
The battery life is also a surprise to me, I charged it just once after a whole week of usage. It claims to support about 100 use cycles with LEDs on for 30 seconds each, but I usually don’t keep it on for that long. It comes pretty natural to charge it alongside your phone, but in order to test the battery life, I tried hard not to do so.
I haven’t accidentally turn it on yet as the power button has a cover to prevent it. Featuring auto shut-off, V-Go will automatically shut down to prevent unintended exposure after 30 seconds of continuous use, but I somehow remembered to turn it off every time (it’ s the matter of habit just like the flashlight, it’s hard not to turn it off although this light is almost invisible)
Overall, it’s a very practical gadget, especially now during the pandemic. It fits perfectly into our daily life and allows us to kill viruses and bacteria on exposed surfaces. “I think we are only at the beginning of this journey to uncover the huge potential the technology offers to make our environment safer,” said Abdi Hariri, co-CEO and co-founder of Safer Planet, a startup based in Silicon Valley. I hope they can create even more both practical and clever products like V-Go in the future!
