Hey everybody, David here from payetteforward.com and upphone.com, and today we're going to
talk about how to clean your iPhone.
The coronavirus has been all over the news lately,
and so it's become vitally important for us to be washing our hands and disinfecting the
surfaces that we touch the most often.
We touch our phones all the time.
So the question becomes, can our phones actually be carriers for this virus or other germs
and bacteria?
And the answer is definitely yes.
A microbiologist from the University of Arizona said that the iPhone or any cell phone carries
10 times the amount of bacteria as the typical toilet seat.
So, yes, we definitely need to disinfect our phones.
One of the things to understand; this is probably the most important thing to understand when
it comes to cleaning your phone is that there's something called an oleophobic coating on
the front and on the back since the iPhone 8.
Oleophobic comes from the Greek word for oil which is Olio and phobic which is the Greek
word for fear, and it refers to the fingerprint-resistant coating that goes on the front of your iPhone
and, like I said, it's been in the back of your iPhone if you have an iPhone that's an
iPhone 8 or newer.
It's really important to keep the oleophobic coating intact on your iPhone.
Without it, the screen will not look as bright or a shiny.
It might get more fingerprints and more smudges and if you damage this coating by using the
wrong product, it's not covered under the iPhones warranty.
Screen damage isn't covered, whether you crack it or whether you wipe off the protective
coating because you accidentally didn't know that you weren't supposed to use bleach, for
instance, or any of the other substances that Apple says to definitely not use.
Under normal conditions, I just use a soft cloth to wipe off my iPhone.
This is a microfiber cloth.
Do not use a paper towel.
Don't use a towel really of any kind because — not because it's going to crack the screen
or scratch the glass and the screen, but because even a paper towel can wipe off this oleophobic
coating and that's the last thing you want to do.
So this phone; I haven't cleaned it in a while so I'm just going to wipe it off.
And it's going to get a little bit shinier because I can see that there are some fingerprints
on it.
I'm actually going to take it out of the case and wipe off the back too.
This is good for wiping off and cleaning your iPhone.
But clearly we haven't done anything in terms of the coronavirus or any other viruses.
It's just wiped off.
So how do we properly clean an iPhone to kill viruses like the coronavirus?
A couple of things to keep in mind before we start cleaning: Make sure that your iPhone
is unplugged from all the external power sources that could damage it if you're cleaning it;
cables.
So let's take it out of the case.
Keep liquids away from it.
Obviously, the newer iPhones are water resistant, but we're not going to dump some liquid on
it.
That's not a great idea.
Especially if it isn't just plain water or if it's a cleaning solution, you can damage
the phone.
Apple recently updated their website with a question: It says, "Is it okay to use a
disinfectant on my iPhone?" and their answer is, "Using a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe or
Clorox disinfecting wipes.
You may gently wipe the exterior surfaces of your iPhone.
Don't use bleach.
Each avoid getting moisture and any openings and don't submerge your iPhone in any cleaning
agents."
So it says we can use a 70% isopropyl alcohol wipe which you can probably find at a drugstore.
You can't really find them online right now on Amazon.
Be creative, but go figure: everybody's bought up all of these things.
Or, Clorox disinfecting wipes.
And these are the Lysol version of the Clorox wipes.
I actually went on a cool website I found.
It's called smartlabel.org; that lets you see the Ingredients in pretty much every household
product, and the inactive ingredients.
And so I checked and the alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride that's in the Clorox wipes
is the same as the alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride in the Lysol wipes.
Took me about 15 times to get that right!
And I was reading the label and it says kills human coronaviruses on hard and non-porous
surfaces in two minutes.
So not instantly; we need to leave this on for two minutes.
And then later on the label it says, "To disinfect, allow to remain wet for four minutes.
Allow surface to air dry.
Toss dirty wipe away."
So don't save it in your collection.
But we need to do is essentially wipe it off and leave it just there for 4 minutes to be
safe — two minutes according to the label to kill the coronavirus.
So let's go ahead and do that.
I've actually never done this before with this phone.
Just going to wipe it off — looks like my email — and then I'm going to wipe off the
back to make sure that it stays a little bit wet, which is fine.
It is a water-resistant iPhone after all.
So I'm going to leave this and I have to leave my phone alone for two minutes for the coronavirus.
I'm also going to wipe off the case.
So if you do have a case that's one of the Apple cases, make sure that you check out
the link that we'll drop in the description section below that has Specific Instructions
about how to clean Apple cases, because it can be kind of a pain.
It's a little bit different than the typical case.
Alright, so I cleaned off my phone.
I'm going to throw away this wipe in a minute, and I'm not wiping it off right away.
I'm just leaving it sitting here for total of four minutes, let's say because I want
to make sure that it gets totally disinfected and clean from the coronavirus and everything
else that's on it.
Now that we talked about what to use, it's just as important that we talk about what
not to use.
So do not use, according to Apple and other websites, window cleaners like Windex.
Do not use other household cleaners, rubbing alcohol, compressed air, aerosol sprays, solvents,
vodka.
Actually, I made that one up.
They didn't say that, but it makes sense.
It's true.
Actually, there's not enough alcohol in vodka to kill the coronavirus.
Ammonia, or abrasives to clean your iPhone.
And abrasives mean any material that can scratch your iPhone, including paper towels, not because
it can scratch the glass surface of the screen, but because it will wipe off the oleophobic
coating.
So what you want to use a microfiber cloth or a lens cloth: something that is extremely
soft.
And if you're using an alcohol solution, like a 70% alcohol for instance, you could just
put a little bit on the cloth first and then wipe your phone with it.
Don't pour it on the phone — makes sense.
There are other ways to clean phones too, but you might not be able to get your hands
on one of them right now because of the coronavirus.
One of them is called PhoneSoap and it's a SmartPhone UV sanitizer.
They say you can't wash your phone, but you can sanitize it with PhoneSoap.
So apparently you can sanitize your phone and other devices with ultraviolet light.
So we'll drop a link in the description section to a search on Amazon for cellphone UV sanitizer.
There's a Homedics one that we like too; we'll drop a link as well.
So a lot of links down there in the description section.
If you want to check them out — if you can find one, good luck, but that will also sanitize
your phone without using any of these liquids.
So it's been 4 minutes and my phone is actually completely dry.
I can see that there are a couple of smudges, but it hasn't done any damage to the actual
coding of the phone.
So now I can just wipe that off now, but that residue is coming right off with a microfiber
cloth.
My phone feels just fine.
Okay: unexpected benefit of doing this: Your phone feels new!
That's amazing.
I had no idea how dirty it actually was.
I've never tried to clean it with a disinfectant wipe before.
I've only used the microfiber cloths.
It's actually amazing.
So if you have one of these, treat yourself!
It looks brand new.
It feels brand new.
On a personal level, It's amazing how things, when something goes wrong, people really come
together.
They're willing to help each other.
And that's one of the things that really inspires me and reminds me about just how good people
actually are.
The people that are close to me, my family, my friends; but then just the people that
I don't even know that live near me, who I don't even pay attention to on a day-to-day
basis, are talking...
I mean, whenever there's a crisis, we're just reminded of how good humanity actually is!
So what I'm doing to prepare for the coronavirus is just staying hydrated, because there's
really not a lot we can do about it, right?
But what I can do is try to stay as healthy as possible.
So thank you guys so much for watching this video.
Please share it with your friends, especially if they have concerns about the coronavirus
too, and also you might help them save a bunch of money in the future because they know what
to use on their iPhone to disinfect it, and not to use bleach or windex or something else
that will damage it.
Please share this video as I just said, please subscribe to our channel if this helped you
out; we're trying to grow.
Give this video a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any other questions.
Thanks and see you all soon.