The camera lens (or lenses) on an iPhone are far more sophisticated than a camera on a smartphone has any right to be. But, it’s a sign of consumer-driven wants that cameras on smartphones have advanced to such a degree. However, no camera lens is worth its salt if you can’t keep it clean.
There are several ways to clean the lenses on an iPhone, including microfiber clothes for quick dusting, lens cleaning wipes, cleaning kits for camera lenses, and lens pens, or avoiding it altogether by using a lens protector to keep them covered and blemish-free.
So there’s really no one official way of cleaning the lens on your iPhone, so long as you stay away from using an abrasive or slightly abrasive cloth or rags to clean it. For example, napkins, regular wash rags, and even toilet paper may be abrasive enough to create micro-scratches across the lens surface.
Table of Contents
- How Do You Clean an iPhone Lens?
- Can You Wipe an iPhone Glass with Alcohol?
- How Do You Clean Foggy iPhone Lenses?
- Bottom Line
How Do You Clean an iPhone Lens?
Unless you went mud riding with the iPhone’s camera portion exposed at the top of your back pocket, most cleanings shouldn’t involve anything more than a simple wipe-down with a microfiber cloth.
There’s no shortage of microfiber cloth on the market, and your iPhone probably came with one, unless you were so excited to start fiddling with the camera that you pulled the iPhone and charging cable out of the box while tossing the rest.
There is MagicFiber, standard microfiber cleaning cloth, Koala Kloth Microfiber Wipes, and so many others it defies logic. Most lens cleaning kits will come with a microfiber cloth as well. Simply hold your iPhone lenses at an angle to the light.
Start wiping with the microfiber until all of the fingerprints and dust particles are visibly removed.
Lens Pens
Lens pens are slim instruments with multiple tools for cleaning smudges and dusting off your camera lenses. You can use the brush side of the pen for everyday dust and the static-attracted particles that land on your iPhone lenses.
The opposite side is the felt side. It’s designed to remove greasy smudges, such as fingerprints and smears, from across your lens, including mud splatters.
Lens Cleaning Kits
Cleaning kits contain just about everything you need to do a deep cleaning of your iPhone camera lens. In most cleaning kits, you’ll find a lens pen, multiple microfiber cloths, air dusters, alcohol, and lens cleaning cloth, usually soaked in isopropyl alcohol.
Camera Lens Protectors
Snap-on lens protectors are often the answer for those of us who don’t travel around with cleaning cloths and other lens-cleaning equipment on us at all times. Not only do they protect your lenses, but they also snap off if you need a really clean angle on whatever you want to take a picture of.
It’s almost the same as having a typical lens cap on a high-end camera. The only difference is you can usually take pictures with the lens protectors still on. Unfortunately, lens protectors are usually not made of the same quality material as the glass in your iPhone lenses.
But that’s okay. A lens protector protects your camera lenses and keeps them clean. If yours gets too muddled for decent use, just pop it off whenever you need to and keep it on, so it protects your lenses until you get a new lens protector. They were pretty cheap.
Can You Wipe an iPhone Glass with Alcohol?
You can use up to 70% isopropyl alcohol, and you can even use Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. The lenses are manufactured with sapphire crystal, and there is nothing that alcohol can do to harm them.
You shouldn’t go higher than 70% because the lenses are sealed in place, and the strength of the alcohol may deteriorate the adhesive material used to secure the lenses. The glass itself is perfectly safe and would be fine even if you used 90% isopropyl. But that adhesive would not.
It’s also advisable to avoid bleach, as it can harm the adhesive material as well. One thing you don’t want to do is saturate your cloth or dump isopropyl alcohol on the lenses. There is such a thing as “too much.”
You only need a lightly damp Q-tip or microfiber cloth to wipe the lens down. Then you come behind it with a dry microfiber cloth to wipe excess moisture away.
How Do You Clean Foggy iPhone Lenses?
This is a different matter entirely. For the most part, if your lenses are fogging up, the moisture is on the inside of the lens, rather than the immediately accessible surface. That presents a problem or three.
For one, there are ways to remove the lenses yourself, as long as you have the right equipment and know-how. However, you risk voiding the warranty or causing more harm than good by removing the lenses.
If the moisture is on the outside of the lens, it’s a simple matter of wiping it with a microfiber cloth or Q-tip until the moisture is gone. On the inside of the lens, you’re looking at an issue that will probably only be resolved by taking the iPhone to an Apple Care Center in an Apple Store or places like Best Buy.
If you don’t have access to a local place like that, you will have to contact Apple Support and probably send the iPhone in for repairs. If it’s outside of warranty, you’ll have to pay for it, unless you purchased one of Apple’s Apple Care packages. Either way, fog inside the lens is the most difficult problem to fix.
Bottom Line
Cleaning and protecting your iPhone camera lenses is not a very difficult thing. It’s mostly just preventative maintenance mixed with the occasional wipe-down. Regardless of which method you use from the above list, it’s pretty cheap.
If you are the unfortunate victim of fog underneath your camera lens, you will probably have to take the iPhone in or send it to Apple for repairs.
