Should you use alcohol wipes on iPhone screen?

We install somewhere aroung 2500 screen protectors per year between 2 retail stores. The answer is to not REGULARLY use alcohol to wipe your screen. We use 70% alcohol pads with very light pressure before polishing screens with Kimwipes, a one time use microscope cleaning cloth.

You will do absolutely no damage to the coating if you us an alcohol pad once. I probably wipe down my own phone with 70% alcohol about once a month.

But I also caution every customer not to do it daily. I have no idea whether 50 alcohol cleanings or 500 cleanings would fully strip the coating, but I operate on the assumption that cleaning daily is a very bad idea.

If you are using a tempered glass screen protector than the protector itself has an oleophibic coating on top. Generally the cheap screen protectors have their coating applied using a spray on process. Our screen protector manufacturer switched to using vacuum deposition a couple years ago. Our price increases by 5-10% but the oleophobic coating does seem to last much longer. than before. My takeway from this is that the cheaper the screen protector, the more likely is is to have a coating that wears away quickly.

I’m cleaning my iPhone screen with alcohol and hand sanitiser lately and it’s going crazy.

The screen has sporadic and random crazy moments. sometimes it doesn’t respond well, sometimes reacts as if I was touching it in places where I’m not.

so it definitely does something.

I have my Xiaomi Redmi 4X since 2017 and I've been regularly cleaning it (thoroughly; front, back, sides, everything) for like 2-3 times a day with 70% alcohol (isopropyl) and I have 0 problems whatsoever. Zip. That's like I've been cleaning it for over at least 3000 times. So I can attest that there's no problem whatsoever. Also glass is glass and glass doesn't corrode just because of some alcohol that evaporates in like a 2-3 secs.

YMMV but for me I haven't got any problem whatsoever from doing it for years. In case you're wondering, the way I did it is by using a clean (dry) facial tissue (a toilet paper or any sterile unused tissue should be ok too). Soak it in the alcohol until it's damp (but not too much), and then gently wipe the phone (in a circular motion). Wipe excess alcohol with the dry part of the tissue. And we're done.

Seriously guys, smartphone's screen is like the 2nd grossest thing beside a toilet, so you should clean it regularly, at least once a day! No excuses. Why would someone not cleaning their phone just because some coatings is beyond me.. Yes, your phone is expensive, but if you're jeopardizing your health just for the sake of it, then I don't think that's a wise thing to do.

Also, with all these pandemics going on, it's imperative for us to keep ourselves clean, and that's including our phones.