Are there chemicals that could damage the camera/screen/USB port, what are the things one should I avoid when cleaning?

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[–] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

Other people have already given sensible suggestions, but I’ll mention one group of chemicals that can damage your phone: bases.

If your phone has aluminium parts, highly concentrated bases will begin to gradually dissolve them. Hopefully nobody was thinking of using dishwasher tablets to make a soap solution for your phone. That’s a bad idea, since the resulting solution has a very high pH-value (base). What about the powder used for washing clothes? Same thing. Even regular hand soap is basic, but it’s nowhere near that extreme.

Exposure time also matters. If you just wipe the phone with a damp cloth, the time will be very short. If you really want to damage the aluminium parts with hand soap, it’s going to take an absurdly long time to do anything. However, those dishwasher tablets are a different beast.

Temperature matters too. These kinds of reactions happen faster if you heat up the solution.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    With soaps and indeed many bases you also have to remember they are made to lower surface tension. Which means soap gets in smaller holes than plain water your water resistant phones were tested with. So very careful with the wetness if you use those.

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