Robotic tablet cleaners are pointless but awesome, and I want one
While the tablet accessory you see above probably isn’t the most useful or necessary companion for your tablet, just the fact that it exists at all is something that I find incredibly amusing. It is exactly what you think it might be – a Roomba-like robot that cleans up your tablet’s display from oil and fingerprints so that you don’t have to.
The robotic device, called the Auto Mee S, slides around the glass display of any phone or tablet, cleaning the display to a perfect shine with two rotating cleaning pads. It can sense the edges of your device to avoid falling off (and breaking from the minimal fall, of course), and completes the cleaning job in about 8 minutes for a tablet or 4 minutes for a phone.
A single AA battery will power it for three hours of cleaning, which (according to my math) amounts to 22.5 tablets cleaned or 45 phones fingerprint free, per charge. Clearly, then, this in no way saves any time, and only alleviates the menial effort required to pull out a cleaning cloth and give the screen a few passes. In fact, getting out the robot may take longer than actually cleaning the device’s display would.
Still, I find myself wanting one of these quite a lot. The price, at least in Japan, is around $17, which is nearly low enough to buy it just for the amusement factor. If it got down to $9.99, I think it would make a great gag gift of sorts, and likely be worth the amusement and surprise of your friends when you pull out a Roomba mini to clean your tablet. I still am amazed that anyone even took the time to develop such a product, but if it ever goes up for sale on Amazon, I’m fairly sure I’ll be buying one even though it will probably be of little use on my Nexus 7.
[Liliputing]