How to disinfect your smartphone and the science of why it matters while preventing the Coronavirus

The World Health Organization is recommending you to disinfect any surface that you use frequently which includes your smartphone screen that you touch more than 2,600 times on an average day. Speaking of your smartphone, is it possible that the virus can spread through this device? Well, first things first, you gotta understand the fact that the flat surfaces of your smartphone can contain crawling germs and even fecal matter that makes it seven times more dirtier than an average toilet seat! So, here’s how you can clean your smartphone with household materials effectively! Here’s what you’ll need. First of all, a microfiber cloth or a soft linen free cloth preferably made of cotton. A few teaspoons of clean water if possible should be distilled. A mild soap used for face wash or hand wash details of which I’ve given down below in the description. And finally cotton swabs.

01:03 - Power down the phone and remove any case or attachments. In a container, make a lukewarm solution of water and the soap. Wet the cloth with the solution but make sure that you don’t soak it. Wipe all parts of the phone properly avoiding the ports and any other openings because if water gets into those ports it can probably damage them even if the phone is water-resistant. Use dry cotton swabs around the camera lenses sports and other openings.

01:35 - If necessary, blow air with your mouth to dislodge any dust or other particles and make sure that you don’t use compressed air reasons for which we’ll discuss later in this video. Make sure to clean the case of the phone as well and allow both the phone and the case to dry completely before inserting it back or plugging in any attachments. You can also use a solution that contains more than 70% isopropyl alcohol instead of the soap. I’ve linked all of the required materials down below in the description so that you don’t have to wander around searching for them. ATP testing, which is a test done to detect the germs on a surface has been done before and after cleaning with both of these methods and both of them have been equally effective in bringing down germs.

02:18 - Alright, it’s also equally important for us to know how not to clean the smartphone and damage it right. You see, most of the phones in our pocket contain a protective coating called the “oleophobic coating”. Oleophobic coating provides a certain amount of finger smudge resistance to your smartphone’s display and also reduces the affinity towards oil and other liquids. So, here are the things that you should avoid cleaning your smartphone with so that you don’t damage the oleophobic coating of your smartphone. Wwindow cleaners like Windex or Collin. Kitchen cleaners like Lysol and fantastic.

02:50 - Paper towels which can leave debris and even scratch your smartphone surface. Compressed air, which with its intense bursts can damage the ports specifically the microphone. And finally disinfectant wipes for which the alcohol levels may be too strong for your smartphone. Now, disinfecting your smartphone might seem like an overkill to do as reported by a lot of media outlets, but that’s because our brains have a tough time understanding exponential curves. Let’s assume that there’s a weed in a pond that doubles every day.

03:30 - If the pond gets filled completely with the weed in 48 days, when you expect the pond to be half filled? It’s actually the 47th day, because, in one day the 50% gets double to 100%. In fact, we don’t even notice the weed’s presence until the 42nd day, when the total area affected is around 1%. This shows that our brains are not exactly prepared for exponential information and viruses also work in a similar way. Remember that I told that “the weed doubles or becomes two times every day”? In the case of viruses, this value is called the R0 value, which is the average number of people that are sick person then in fact or the ratio between the number of people being affected on consecutive days. If we plot the days in x-axis and the number of people affected by any virus attack in the y-axis, we get a bell curve, which looks like this.

04:20 - If the R0 value is higher, the curve becomes steeper infecting a lot of people in a single day. This can be extremely dangerous as even though in both scenarios, we have equal number of people affected in total higher number of people being affected in a single day can lead to insufficient healthcare facilities. When the healthcare becomes insufficient, it leads to the death of a lot more people due to the lack of treatment which could be easily avoided. Surprisingly, you actually can reduce the R0 value and flatten the curve if you follow the basic protective measures against Corona virus which includes cleaning your smartphone. Also remember, it doesn’t matter how long you wash your hands.

04:59 - If you pick up your unclean smartphone right back after washing your hands all the germs will be back in your hands. So, it is important to clean your smartphone regularly not because there is any evidence that the virus can spread through the smartphone but there is no evidence that it won’t! .