Anti-reflective coating on iPhone camera lense wearing off

Mine started flaking off after about 2 weeks. I keep it in the pocket of my jeans all day at work and the thing gets pretty polished by being there. It really blurred my photos. I am happy to report that now all of the AR coating has flaked off and my pictures are back to normal. I can't tell the difference between my pics with AR and without, but when I had blotches of semiflaked AR on the lens, my pictures were pretty bad.

I have this problem too. I live in Canada and I have unlocked my phone so I can't return it. I read on this site that the AR coating can be removed using a glass etching solution. The caveat is this will only work with plastic lenses... does anybody know with any certainty that the lens in the iphone is plastic? I would assume so but with apple you never know. The touch screen is glass.

Anyway for tips for removing the AR coating...

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf947057.tip.html

I really wouldn't try it with a plastic-only solution. The chances of the lens being plastic are very, very small in my opinion. Maybe it's just because I've seen few or no plastic camera lenses, but it seems that if they're willing to make the screen out of breakable glass to enhance the clarity over plastic, they would do the same with the lens. Remember the 5Gen ipod faces? It would really suck if your lens was that scratched, no?

Having worked with lens that are coated (Astronomical). I would say leave the coating alone. These coatings are very thin. Missing some of the coating should not make the image blurry.

Using an etch to remove the coating would probably distort the lens. The above link for an etch was used on eyeglasses. Eyeglasses and the lens in the iPhone are completely two different types of lenses. Eyeglasses are correcting lens and the iPhone lens is a focusing lens.

Since the iPhone lens is exposed all the time these coatings should start to flake away...it's common.

As for using pure alcohol...may be a few cap full' in a bottle of distilled water.

As for seeing defects in your photos... Nah...not from the coatings.

my 2 cents.

Definitely there will be defects in your photos from the coating coming off the lens. That was how I noticed my problem in the first place. The lens itself was clean - but the coating was gone and it was messing up the image. This was so pronounced that turning on the photo app and holding it next to another iPhone with an intact (and clean) lens for comparison showed white haloing and blooming around light/dark contrast areas of virtually any image.

As for an unlocked phone I'd just reflash it as far back to stock as you can and take it in for service. Apple is just going to end up repairing and reflashing the phone to resell it as a refurb anyways. True they won't service you if you don't have an AT&T account activated with that iPhone but only you can decide if a $500 device is worth scrapping one of its cool features in order to have a cellular plan on another carrier. Apple has stated that they will not support your iPhone if it stops functioning due to unauthorized software being loaded onto the phone.

BUT no 3rd party software or SIM unlock that I'm aware of has the ability to affect the AR coating on the camera lens. However, if you demonstrate the problem while snapping a picture of an Apple Genius while using the iPirate program - well, then you're taking your own chances there.

I got the iPhone as a gift and i'm having the same problem. Do I need to bring the receipt to the Apple store?

Is there any way I can just remove the coating completely, I don't really use the camera, but the blotchyness really gets to me.

I also have this issue. I stared to notice that the quality of my pictures was becoming poor. I thought it was just a dirty lens but it appears to be more than that. It's too bad they didn't make the lens out of the same material they made the screen out of.

I wonder if its worth getting fixed? After all.... *wont the new one run into this same problem?*

I am having this issue as well :/ I have only had the phone since October 7th, and it has been in a case with a nice lip around the camera window. I have no idea how it happened. With the phone being so new in my case, just barely over a month now, should I attempt taking it into an Apple store tomorrow, and what are my chances of walking out with a phone tomorrow vs waiting for a repair/replacement from warranty? Thanks for the advice here! - nat

I, sadly, have the same experience with the lens being blotched and not half as clear as it was a month ago when I bought it. I guess I'll have to visit my local Apple store for advice. I even used Apple's iKlear on it, and tried gently cleaning it with a Q-tip, but to no avail.

Same problem - glad I found this thread before I started poking around the edges with an xActo knife trying to find the edge of a suspected plastic packing shield .... I will have to see if I can tolerated any visible aberrations in my typical photos before I mix it up with Apple.

I called AppleCare and told them of the problem. They 'said' they were unaware of it. I asked for and received a case number from a very helpful guy. I've made an appt. to bring the phone in tomorrow to my local Apple Store and will see what happens. I've rechecked recent iPhone photos on Photoshop. They 'are' blurry on the edges. They weren't that way when the phone was new.

After 10-15 minutes of the nice young man at my local Apple store taking photos (w. the iPhone) of his hand and the wood-grained counter top (and arguing with me a bit that they looked clear to him), he excused himself (w. the iPhone) to the back of the store to examine the lens more closely.

Ten minutes later he returned with a new iPhone. We looked closely at the camera lens. It was shiny and clear, unlike the one I brought in. I thanked him and walked out a satisfied Apple customer.

Now I need to have as good luck bringing back my new 24" Intel glass and aluminum iMac and having them give me one w/o the horizontal distortion in the display from light to dark.

I have the same problem everyone is describing here. I thought it was a smudge, so I used a napkin to clean with. When looking at the lense under a light and then tilt it slightly, you can see what appears to be a scratch, but this is not a scratch. My picture quality has been very poor. I went online searching for an answer and was directed to this website. I read everyone's replies and it sounds like my next step is to take into an apple store, only I bought this phone at Cingular/ATT, so I will try taking it to them. What happens if/when they replace the phone and the same thing happens?

yep. I have the same issue. I noticed it a few weeks ago. I dont clean mine with anything but a damp terrycloth towel.