Can I fix my iPhone 4's scratched camera?

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Posted by Oliver Hulland (Questions: 39, Answers: 59)
Asked on February 7, 2012 1:32 pm
267442 Views

I love my iPhone 4's camera, but my resistance to using a case has lead to the glass in front of the lens to become scratched. Are there any quick/easy fixes for this sort of thing?

-- oliver
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Posted by christopher (Questions: 0, Answers: 65)
Answered On February 8, 2012 9:33 am

Hmmm... I would suggest headlamp restorer first. The car industry has a few solutions for this, along the lines of pastes that you work into scratches and then continually buff out, going less and less gritty until you've polished it back to form. I would image at that scale, a Dremel is your tool of choice.

However, if it's just the glass, maybe the folks that repair iPods also fix the glass on iPhones too. I can't imagine it being very difficult to do if you have the replacement part and tools -- sourcing is harder than the task.

Are looking DIY?

-C

  • Funnily enough after an extra dose of googling I found that there are people in Hong Kong who will ship a new lens cover to your door for $1.74 total (via ebay). It's apparently not all that difficult to open up the iPhone 4 case, so I plan on replacing it when it gets here. I'll let you know how it works.

    I, too, though the headlamp restorer might work, but the problem I encountered was that the lens was glass, and not plastic like most headlamps.

    -- oliver

    (Oliver Hulland at February 8, 2012 4:29 pm)

  • Hmmm, I would suppose that the switch from glass headlamps to ABS has actually made restoration a business in itself. I don't ever remember have to "restore" headlights on my older cars (pre 1982).

    (christopher at February 9, 2012 8:15 am)
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Posted by hughes (Questions: 0, Answers: 1)
Answered On February 21, 2012 3:33 pm

Drop by an Apple store for a new lens glass piece (and new glass back) for $30. Techs routinely change the glass that covers the lens when replacing the back glass on iPhone 4/4s.
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Posted by chunk (Questions: 0, Answers: 13)
Answered On November 24, 2012 1:23 am

Definitely use a replacement lens. Tangentially, the bionic version of a headlight restoring kit (much better but similar; used to restore small aircraft windshields for example) can be had in a small format retail here https://www.google.com/shopping/product/8274008141707160378?scoring=r&safe=off&q=micromesh&sa=X&ei=r5GwUKjXHMiKiAKCloCwCg&ved=0CHkQ8wIwAA if urls' are a no-no the keyword you want is "micro mesh".
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