Now you can clean your touch screen just like you clean the lint off your favorite sweater, with a roller!  How cool is that!?

Fingerprints on smartphone and tablet screens can’t be avoided; after all, you have to use your fingers to touch them and with our bodies secreting all sorts of oils, the prints are going to stick.

But if a dirty screen is your pet peeve, the iCOLOCOLO (iRoller), should be able to give you some relief by letting wipe those prints—or rather, roll them— clean away!

King Jim Co Ltd, a Japanese company which makes office supplies came up with this nifty item, which went on sale from September 28th. It costs 1260 yen, or about $15.75 US, and is available on Amazon.

“When iPad was first being marketed two years ago, one of our staff looked at the dirty screen full of fingerprints and said that we need to produce something that will easily clean these fingerprints off.  That’s where the idea came from,” said a spokesperson for King Jim Co.

According to a survey taken of touch panel users, a dirty screen was cited as the most common reason for  dissatisfaction with a touch device.  The demand was there and production of iCOLOCOLO began.  It took over a year for it to finally become a finished product.

iCOLOCOLO differs from a lint of carpet roller in that the latter picks up dust and hair with an adhesive cleanser. iCOLOCOLO uses an absorbent, acrylic-based adhesive made especially for the surface of a screen.  A regular carpet cleaner roller stretches out and rubs it clean, while the iCOLOCOLO absorbs the oils of the fingerprint, in essence, lifting the prints off of the screen.

Japanese website Excite Bit took the iCOLOCOLO for a test drive with an iPad, making sure to rub their greasy fingers all over screen so it was sticky with prints. They then tried cleaning it with the iCOLOCOLO and found it was like wiping a heavy layer of dust away with a wash rag. The roller completely absorbed the oil of the fingerprints and left a clean surface on the screen. The verdict? It works!

The roller can be used up to 40 times before you have to change the tape and comes with 12 roles. If you do your math, it’s possible to use this roller 500 times before you need to shell out for a new pack of rolls.

In a company setting where a single tablet may be used by many people, it’s reassuring to have a quick and easy way to clean the screen every once in a while (you never know who has been using it). Heck, it works so well that you might even be tempted to Colocolo the floors and windows!

Source: Excite Bit News