What is happening here? In South Korea there is a growing fad for phone sterilization....Heaven forbid that you might pick up some nasty bug from a unsanitized phone.

Today, Tuesday, 05 October 2004 SK Teletech became the first handset maker in the world to launch silver-nano coated mobile phones with a sterilizing function. The company's new model IM-7400 is a 1.1-megapixel CCD camera phone coated with nanometer (1 billionth of a metre) thick silver particles that are effective, they claim, at attacking pathogens and deodorizing. The anti-germ and anti-odor silver-coating has been applied to home appliances such as TV's, washing machines and vacuum cleaners but, until now, not to handsets - until IM-7400, the company added. In addition, the semi-automatic slide phone is equipped with 180-degree swiveling camera and a huge 100 MB memory. According to "a recent study", a handset is inhabited on average by 25,000 bacteria! Yes, but look at the filth around the average workstation. Believe me, you don't want to know what is lurking there.