iPhone 5 Camera Problems

Got an iPhone–not the very latest one–and it's the cat's pajamas, except that after a few days, the camera stopped working. Black screen, neither front nor back cam working, zipola.

So, I went onto the net, saw this wasn't uncommon, and looked at the list of fixes.

Tried them all. Some of them seemed to fix it, but that was temporary. Next time I opened the camera app, I got ye olde black screen and controls that didn't do anything useful ...

There were a bunch of things suggested: soft reset, hard reset, (force-closing the app, powering off and on), resetting the phone's preferences to factory, toggling, trying third party cameraware, erasing third party applications, yadda, yadda.

If none of those worked, as I understood it, chances were it was a hardware problem, and best I get it replaced. So I sent a note to my carrier and said, "Hey, camera ain't working, here's what I did, now what?"

But while I was waiting for an answer, I scoured the boards, and came across this:

Miso117Jun 9, 2014 7:04 PM 
Re: iPhone 5 rear camera is not workingin response to Gibox

*WORKAROUND FOUND* - I know there are a bunch of tricks that don't work. My wife had this same exact problem on her 5, which I took to the Genius Bar today and they told me I had to shell out $250 for a new phone. I went home and started playing. *FYI My wife's quicklaunch screen had the Flashlight dimmed out and that would not work either... This fixed them both!

1. Go into Settings

2. General

3. Restrictions

4. Select "Enable Restrictions" - Put in a passcode of your choice / 0000

5. *When the restrictions become available, de-select Camera and Facetime

6. Back out to home screen (Camera should be gone)

7. Reboot phone (hold power and home until phone shuts off)

8. Turn phone back on and go back into Settings > General > Restrictions

9. Enable Camera and Facetime

10. Disable Restrictions

11. Back out to home screen (Camera should be available)

12. Swipe up to quick launch - Flashlight should be available

13. Check Camera, rear facing camera should be functional

If this works for you please spread the word, this is NOT a hardware issue, but a software one, the people @ the Genius Bar should be doing this for customers instead of recommending they buy a new phone

Now, I dunno if this will do you any good if you are having the same problem. And to be honest, I dunno if it will still work come the morning, but at least for the moment, it did fix things. If you are desperate, it would be worth a shot ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Nope, didn't do the trick. Stopped working again. A last-ditch effort involved wiping all the phone data and reloading the software from iTunes back-up. That didn't fix it, either, so new hardware is coming ...