HELP! Accidentally deleted photo app from my phone!

You cannot delete the photo app from the phone. You cannot delete any of the factory applications. One of a couple of things happened. Either you moved it to another home screen, or a software glitch has hedden it. The first thing to try is a reset to the phone. Hold down the home and power button together until you see the Apple logo and then release, ignoring the slide to power off screen. If that doesn't restore it, then go to settings, general, reset, and then reset home screen layout.

Also, pictures in the camera roll are not in the photo app. Photos in the photo app, the photo library are put there by a sync from the comptuer to the iPhone through iTunes. They are pictures on your computer that you have synced to the iPhone. Pictures in the camera roll are ones that you have either taken with the iPhone, saved from an email or MMS or saved off the Internet. Those pictures need to be imported to the computer as soon as possible so you can save them. Keeping them in the camera roll without importing risks losing them if something were to happen to the iPhone. Use whatever photo importing software that you would use for a digital camera and import the photos.

You are entirely correct that pre-installed applications cannot be deleted. However, as was pointed out to me on these forums, if you enable Restrictions (Settings / General / Restrictions... ) it is possible to hide the camera application and several others including disabling location-based services.

This might be what has happened, in which case you will need the know or guess successfully the passcode that will have been set on the Restrictions screen, or do a restore as otherwise recommended.

The same thing happened to my friend and I tried so manny different things to get it to work. This one worked.

First you're going to want to backup your phone in iTunes (Plug the phone into your computer, open iTunes and push the Sync button.) After backing it up, tap on settings on your phone. Tap on General and scroll all the way down to the bottom and tap Reset then select the first option Reset All Settings. Now go to iTunes and click Restore button and let it go through the process. There will be a screen that will come up giving you two options, click on Use Previous Backup. This will restore all of your settings, text messages, etc. Also, notice the photo app that appeared on your home screen.

Sync>Reset Settings>Restore>Use Previus Backup

Hopes this helps!

You are correct about there being a spot to enable restrictions, however the photo app is not one of the apps that can be restricted. Also, restrictions can only be enabled by the person that owns the phone, unless they lend it out to people.

Again, in answer to the OP's question, you cannot delete the photo app, as it is one of the Apple apps that comes as part of the OS.

My mistake, you are entirely correct. Apologies for the confusion (actually it is I who is confused! LOL)

There have been a few cases where the photo app disappeared off of the home screen. It's the software having issues.