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jcorbin

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 18, 2011
1,135
259
D.C.
does anyone know if the speaker/microphone “grills” are metal or something else? There is some gunk building up in the holes and I want to clean it out but don’t want to damage the grill for fear of breaking the water tight seal. I tried blowing into them but no dice. Don’t have canned air atm. Thinking the corner of a piece of paper might suffice.
 
Do not use canned air to clean the speaker holes. That's what I did, and I ended up replacing the speaker because I ruined the speaker by blowing air right in to it (using canned air).

If you are going to use canned air, you have to open up the phone and blow the junk out from the inside. But I guess that's not an option.

Have you tried some scotch tape wrapped into a point, on a tooth stick? And some alcohol on a Q-tip/cotton bud?
 
Corner of a post it got the bigger pieces of dirt or lint or whatever out. Can blowing into them myself damage it?
 
Corner of a post it got the bigger pieces of dirt or lint or whatever out. Can blowing into them myself damage it?

Have you tried a toothpick? You could also use a fine bristle brush that is not abrasive as well to get in between the grooves of the speaker holes.
 
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Have you tried a toothpick? You could also use a fine bristle brush that is not abrasive as well to get in between the grooves of the speaker holes.

Silly Putty is ideal for this sort of job - works a treat on keyboards and pretty much anything where lint and gunk get stuck in small gaps.

Just a soft brush cleaned up my speaker grill.

All of these, the last thing to do is blow out the grill with compressed air.
 
Do not use canned air to clean the speaker holes. That's what I did, and I ended up replacing the speaker because I ruined the speaker by blowing air right in to it (using canned air).

If you are going to use canned air, you have to open up the phone and blow the junk out from the inside. But I guess that's not an option.

Have you tried some scotch tape wrapped into a point, on a tooth stick? And some alcohol on a Q-tip/cotton bud?
Canned air is actually very good for this kind of cleaning, but do not blow the air INTO the speaker, blow it ACROSS the top of the hole. The moving air creates a low pressure which can suck dust out of the hole. Same with the lightning port.
 
Silly Putty is ideal for this sort of job - works a treat on keyboards and pretty much anything where lint and gunk get stuck in small gaps.

If anyone one wants to get silly putty is a bigger quantity or cheaper price try Plumbers Putty. I swear I think it’s the same thing.
 
Use BlueTack.

 
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Use BlueTack.


Not a good idea. If any of the sticky tack actually embeds itself inside the speaker grill, that’s going to make the situation a lot worse. A soft bristle brush/toothpick should be more than sufficient.

I’ve cleaned the speaker grill from my iPhone in the past, a toothpick works perfectly, almost removing all the debris, and a soft brush finishes the job.
 
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I had a really dirty 7+ ear speaker. Basically it was make up caked into the speaker from my wife using it. I just took a nylon brush and cleaned it out. Worked like a charm
 
Buy a cheap toothbrush that you dedicate to your phone and use that every week. That way it won't build up. Just go at it until it's clean. You can slightly wet the brush too to soften up the built up gunk.

If you blow into the grills, both the speaker and the mic could go out easily, also you are just blowing dirt into it, not cleaning out of it.
 
Canned air won't work if the build-up is aged and blue tack is a bad idea.

Use some sort of a brush with hard hair (nylon, toothbrush, art brush etc), that's what would work 100% and is safe to do.
 
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