Here’s How To Clean and Disinfect Your Cell Phone
This is one of those Good News / Bad News things. The Bad News is that we all know that our cellphones are grubby, grimy, germ magnets. The Good News is that nearly a year into a global COVID-19 pandemic a lot of us are choosing to keep them pretty clean.
YouGov recently surveyed more than 6,500 adults, asking them, 'How often, if ever, do you clean your cell phone?'
The results were actually pretty encouraging. 26% of the participants said Daily, 22% said Weekly, and 14% said A Few Times A Month. That adds up to about 62% of us consistently cleaning our phones. I'm not sure what that number was a year ago, but I'm willing to bet it was lower.
Not everyone has jumped on the clean phone bandwagon, though. 14% said Less Than Once A Month, 6% said they Don't Know, and 8% said Never.
Yikes. I hope I never have to borrow their phone.
Now that we know that we SHOULD clean our phones, just HOW should we go about doing it?
It turns out it's really pretty simple. Stay away from bleaches, window cleaning solutions, and rubbing alcohol because they can damage the special coatings that prevent fingerprints on our phones. Paper towels can cause really small scratches and scuffs too, so you'll want some microfiber cloth or eyeglass cleaning cloth. Oh, yeah. Even if your phone is supposed to be waterproof it's probably not a good idea to dump it in the sink with your dirty dinner dishes.
You CAN, however, use that extensive stash of Clorox or Lysol disinfecting wipes that you collected back in the spring when everyone was buying every cleaning product they could find. Just wipe the outside of the phone down gently, let it air dry so the disinfectant can do its thing on your phone's surface, then wipe off the residue with your microfiber cloth. When you're finished your phone will feel almost like it did when it was brand new.
You can take the phone out of its case if you like but most of the germs will be on the outside, that's the part that's exposed to the big, bad, COVID infested world.
This video is primarily for iPhone users, but the general ideas will hold up no matter what kind of phone you have.
The guy in the video leaves his phone turned on the whole time but I've found it easier to power it down first. That way you're not accidentally activating an app or calling your ex.
Should you sanitize your phone this thoroughly every day? That's up to you to decide. But at least you'll know how when you're ready to clean it up.