Electronic cleaner on my iris scanner / front camera damaged them?

Hi @monist ,

All liquids except distilled water conduct electricity to some degree.

What are the listed ingredients of the liquid cleaner that you used?

Usually Isopropyl Alcohol 99%+ (available at electronics parts stores) is recommended. Although it also is still conductive when wet, it evaporates quickly and leaves no residues, conductive or otherwise, whereas other cleaners may have additives etc and may leave residues and are not as effective

The idea with liquid electronic cleaners is that the power is disconnected or removed from the device before cleaning.

Unfortunately this is difficult with most modern mobile phones as the battery is hard to easily access. Also switching off the device may not help either as the power button is not a power isolating switch merely a momentary switch that signals the CPU on the systemboard as to what to do. There is always power available at some points on the systemboard even when the phone is “off”. Think of the phone being in an extremely low power state rather than being totally switched off and isolated from the power supply i.e. battery.

Usually you can get away with cleaning with a spray as long as the liquid is not liberally sprayed onto the device. Spray it on a clean, lint free cloth so the cloth is just damp, not dripping and then wipe small areas and allow to evaporate before repeating if necessary and moving on.

A lot of phones are only water resistant and not waterproof but again this is when they left the factory and perhaps not after they have been used for a while. My personal view is that accidentally dropping the phone more than once or twice or leaving a phone in the back pocket of jeans can’t be doing the frame much good, as far as the integrity of the case’s water resistance is concerned, i.e. cracking or bending it slightly through sitting on it or leaning against things with it located there