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Review of OJD L06 - Phone Sanitizer - 1

A detailed Description on How we Qualified Phone Sanitizers - 1

No established way to quality UV phone sanitizer

During the COVID-19 peak season in spring 2020, the demand of Phone Sanitizer products in US market skyrocketed. According to Google Ads, the search count for keywords: “Phone UV Sanitizer” jumped from 1.6K to 40.5K, and “Phonesoap” jumped from 33.1K to 368K in March 2020. We have seen research confirming the effectiveness of UVC to eliminate Coronavirus.  We also received requests from our existing customers. Customers said the all-of-a-sudden super popular cell phone sterilizer was nowhere to be found. This prompted us to start the pursuit of a reliable source for UV phone cleaners.

Soon, we discovered the difficulty in sourcing Cell Phone Sanitizer is not with finding manufacturers – we received samples from five different manufacturers in just one week, but on how to successfully qualify the product. Our first stop is to look into reputable regulations at governments. Unfortunately, the UV phone sanitizer is such a novelty product that even FDA has not established rules to regulate it. There is one popular Chinese Mobile phone disinfection box vendor called 59S who claims to own FDA certification. However, after further examination on the claim, we found the FDA certification is granted in the category for a toothbrush, not cellphone cleaning.

Some vendors sent us evaluation reports from accredited laboratories in China. The result always looks good – reaching 99% disinfection rate. But, we found flaws in the testing procedure. They all follow the same routine – open the disinfection box, sample for germs, close the box to operate for a certain period of time, open the box to sample again, and compare the germ count before and after operation. The thing missing in the routine is the placement of the cellphone. We all know the UVC light loses energy after each reflection. Without the cellphone presented the box, the actual route for UVC light to reach different positions on the cellphone surface cannot be simulated. The UVC light may not reach the back side of the cell phone and it might not carry enough energy to kill germs in the operation cycle.

Our next stop was to study how the most successful US phone sanitizer company – Phonesoap, proves their concept. At this page on their website, we see a list of testimonials from gadget reviewers, youtubers and news stations. Basically, they all use the same approach – swap the phone before and after the Phonesoap disinfection cycle, cultivate the swap in petri dishes and compare for the results. This approach is indeed a very direct method to visualize the result. The significant reduction of those colorful dots on petri dishes creates a strong emotional link to consumers’ mind convincing them the idea can work. But, the petri dishes are usually built with certain nutrition to encourage the growth of certain germs. What’s lacking in those testimonials is the clarity of what those used petri dishes are specially built for. Also, the swap test and cultivation in the petri dishes needs to be conducted in a controlled clean environment. The way the youtubers perform the test could easily introduce unwanted variants into the result.   

Using an UVC light meter to measure the energy which falls onto the cell phone surface sounds a good idea, but proves to be not practical. The UVC light meter usually comes with a light sensor as the size of a quarter. The cell phone compartment in the phone sanitizer is never built with enough space to house both the phone and the light meter sensor head together, and it does not allow the cover to be closed at the same time.

Luckily, the color changing UVC light stickers have come to our rescue. The color displayed on the sticker will change  according to the accumulated UVC energy on the testing spot. By figuring out the best  way to apply UVC stickers and by studying the proper UVC Irradiation dosage table to kill different bacteria and virus, we developed an effective method to qualify cell phone UV sanitizers. We will disclose the method in our next update. Stay tuned.