Guide on How to Sanitize Mobile Phone at Home: Crucial Tips & Tricks You Must Follow & Products for Sanitizing You Can Order Online (2021)

Coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives massively. We have been under lockdown for quite some time with work and other activities suspended, and the world is gradually 'unlocking' itself as you are reading this. But our lives are nowhere near normal. Masks have become a part of our daily attire; we are not going out unless absolutely necessary, we have to maintain social distancing when we are outside, a gathering of people is heavily restricted or not allowed at all, sports is happening without a live audience, and public places are either closed or running with half their usual capacity.

But all these restrictions are for our best. It is to protect us from getting infected and prevent spreading the virus. Similarly, we have adopted certain personal protection measures like washing our hands with alcohol-based, sanitizing hand wash, and spray disinfectant all about the house. But, we overlook one particular object in this cleaning and sanitizing spree. That object is our phones. We use it every day and are in close contact with it, yet we do not think of cleaning it properly. 360-degree protection is our priority, so we must clean our phones to ensure that. Follow this BP Guide to clean and sanitize your phone properly.

Would you believe us if we told you that, at times, our phones are even dirtier than our toilets? It is gross but true. The "cleaning" of our phones usually involves rubbing it with a cloth now and then. This "cleaning" doesn't clean our phones at all. It just makes the cloth you are cleaning with dirty. Deep cleaning your smartphone involves five steps to be followed in chronological order. The five steps are as follows:

This is the very first step to cleaning any object. When there is dust on anything, and you rub it with some cleaning liquid or water, what you will get is grime. So start the cleaning and sanitizing process of your phone by thoroughly dusting it. Do so with a cotton cloth and a gadget cleaning brush. Remove your phone's back cover if you have one and rub the dry cotton cloth all over your phone. Blow intermittently. Then take the gadget cleaning brush and run it all over the phone until there are no specks of dust on it.

You can replace the gadget cleaning brush with an unused makeup brush. The appropriate brush for this purpose is one that has soft, light, and voluminous bristles. Both gadget cleaning and makeup brush have the above characteristics. You can use whichever of the two is available to you.

Your smartphone is not a smooth cubical tablet. There are many crevices on it, namely the headphone jack, charging port, and the tiny speaker holes. These are spaces where dust accumulates unnoticed. Dusting with a cotton cloth and a brush, no matter how thoroughly, will not remove the accumulated dust in these crevices. For these, you need tiny cotton buds and a suction squeeze bulb (also called an air blower).

If you cannot find any slim cotton buds, then make yourself by tightly rolling cotton wool at the end of a needle. Put one of these buds into the ports and gently roll them between two fingers. Don't be aggressive with the rolling, or you might damage the ports. Then take the bulb and put the nozzle in the ports, and give two squeezes. Follow this process until you are satisfied that there is no remaining dust in the crevices.

This is where we start sanitizing the phone. For this, you will need a microfiber cloth and a disinfectant liquid. Mist a small part of the cloth with the disinfectant and start wiping the phone. Start with the screen and then proceed towards the rest of the phone. Do not spray the disinfectant directly on the phone or make the cloth too wet.

Gadgets are not immune to liquid, and so there are high chances of you damaging your phone if you spray the disinfectant directly on the phone. The same goes for making the cloth too wet before wiping.

We often do not think about cleaning the accessories of our phones. We restrict ourselves to cleaning the phone only. But it is a thoughtless act. Your back cover is one of your phone accessories, and if you put your cleansed and sanitized phone back into that dirty cover, it renders all your efforts down the drain.

Cleaning your accessories is as important as cleaning your phone. They are pretty easy to clean. Dust your back cover by wiping it with a cotton cloth and then running the gadget brush over it. Then mist the part of a microfiber cloth with a disinfectant and wipe the back cover thoroughly. The process is the same as cleaning your phone. Follow the same process while cleaning the other accessories like chargers and earphones. In the case of earphones, there needs some extra cleaning, which involves cleaning the ear wax from the earphone's buds. The best way to clean that is by using a cotton bud.

This is the last but the most crucial step in cleaning your phone. After you have dusted your phone and accessories and wiped them with a disinfectant, it is time to spray on them a gadget disinfectant. This disinfectant spray is an added layer of protection to top all that you have done above. You might question its necessity, especially after carefully dusting and wiping your phone, but an added layer of protection is not going to hurt anybody. Also, what with Coronavirus still present, you can never be too careful.

Most of the time, we do more harm than good when cleaning and sanitizing our phone. We directly spray the disinfectant on the phone and wipe it, increasing the chances of it getting damaged by the liquid. We use the wrong disinfectant solutions that are either ineffective in removing bacteria and viruses or are corrosive to the smartphone.

Then there is the question of when and how frequently we should clean and sanitize our smartphones. How many times can we clean the phone before it becomes overdoing? Should we disinfect our phones more often than usual during this coronavirus pandemic? These are important questions that we need answering. So, read on to find out the do's and don'ts of phone sanitizing.

The Coronavirus pandemic has forced us to purchase many specialised cleaning liquids containing hydrogen peroxide, bleach, ammonia, and lactic acid. While these are very effective against Coronavirus and you can safely clean phone cases with them, it is not recommended that you use them to clean mobile phones and other electronic gadgets. It is common knowledge that electronic gadgets get damaged when they come in contact with liquid.

It is also advisable not to use other household cleaning products like floor and wall cleaners, soap, vinegar, wound cleaners, anti-bacterial wipes, and makeup remover. These anti-bacterial and antiviral cleaners, if used, will surely kill all germs and viruses and also kill your phone in the process.

Instead of using the above cleaning liquids, use any cleaning solution with more than 70% alcohol content. The products that fulfil this requirement are alcohol pads that doctors use to sanitize the skin before injections, diluted rubbing alcohol, and alcohol-based wipes and sprays.

Hygiene product manufacturers have stepped up to the challenge of the pandemic and have been producing sanitizers and sprays that can be safely used on electronics. Besides, phone manufacturers have started releasing instructions on what cleaning products can be used on their phones. Follow them closely when cleaning your smartphone.

It is also better to use wipes or microfiber cloth misted with a disinfectant solution than a spray as a spray solution may pool on the phone and cause internal damage. All in all, the above stated 5 points are the most effective way to clean a phone, irrespective of what brand it is, without damaging it.

Your phone is the filthiest object that you carry around with you. Your sweat gets deposited on it every day and so do the dust and germs when you go outside. You drop your phone on the floor and ground and give it a perfunctory rub on your shirt before using it. Your phone is also the most used object, especially during such times of widespread digitalisation; you are using your phone whether you are ordering food or personal banking. This entails that your smartphone is always dirty and poses the most risk to your health. Hence, you must deep clean your phone once every single day, and in this Coronavirus pandemic, disinfect your phone after:

You know the steps to clean and sanitize your phone, you know what to use and what not to use to clean your phone, and you know when and how frequently to do so. You must have noticed that you need certain products for proper cleaning and sanitization of your phone. They are cleaning solutions, microfiber cloths, cleaning brushes, and sanitizers. The following list contains those products to make it easy for you to get them:

This is an all-in-one gadget cleaning kit. The kit contains a suede microfiber cloth of dimensions 180 mm x 155 mm, a plush microfiber cloth of dimensions 160 mm x 160 mm, a gadget cleaning brush, an air blower, a pack of 10 earbuds, and a cleaning solution weighing 25 ml.

This is useful for cleaning your phone and any other gadget that you own like computers, cameras, and the likes. The cleaning solution that comes with this kit has anti-bacterial properties. This cleaning kit is a convenient option for most people who do not have the time or patience to buy each gadget cleaning tool separately. This six-piece gadget cleaning kit is priced at Rs. 279 on Amazon.

This mobile phone sanitizer is another must-have in such times of COVID -19. This sanitizer has a potent formula that not only kills bacteria and germs but also removes fingerprints and grease from the surface of your phone. Like the previous product, this too can be used to sanitize any other gadget that you own. It is effective enough to kill 99.9% of the germs on your phone and does so in just 5 minutes. This sanitizer comes for Rs. 129 on Amazon.

Bacto V Gadget Disinfectant Spray has been designed specifically to protect gadgets from bacteria and viruses. Its alcohol-based formula kills 99.9% of germs without damaging your phone in the process. Unlike other disinfectant sprays, its solution does not pool on the gadgets, thus preventing internal harm. The spray has a pleasant smell and is a very useful thing to have in your house and your bag in today’s times. The bottle contains 100 ml of disinfectant and comes at Rs. 232 on Flipkart.

This is an optional product, but you can get it if you think it will benefit you. It is essentially a gadget that sterilises mobile phones and other objects like keys, watches, rings, earphones, etc. It is a box that uses electricity to sterilize your phone. Put your phone in the box and switch it on. Keep the phone in it for 6 minutes for complete sterilization. This gadget does more than sterilizing phones. There is a dock in it where you can pour drops of aromatic oil and switch on the device for some aromatherapy. You can also charge your phone in it. This multi-functional sterilizing box comes at a price of Rs. 4,999, available on mobitizer.in.