Hi Mark,
Don't give up on your phone just yet! It is a great product and I have an iPhone 5 as well and it was worth the time to fix my camera lens with the same issue. You can purchase a new replacement camera lens for about $20 and fix it yourself like I did. Took me less than an hour and it works perfectly and I'm shooting pictures every day again with no purple spots!
And people are probably wondering WHY this happens to their phone. Why are there purple spots in my camera lens and why are other people having the same problem and WHY isn't Apple fixing it for everyone? Well, I'll tell you why they aren't fixing it for people....it's because the purple spots are not a problem with the actual hardware but rather they are a product of HUMAN ERROR, namely, those of us who own the phones. It's OUR fault that the purple spots are there in the first place and I'll tell you why....
What the purple spots are is in fact actual small pieces of dust that have been lodged inside the very delicate lens of the camera. The dust pieces are not on the outside of the lends, otherwise we'd be able to simply open up the phone and blow some air inside the lens area or use a cotten swab to wipe the lens clean, and that would be that. But no, that doesn't work with the purple spots because what has happened is that some very small dust particles have gotten lodged INSIDE the actual lens, in between the lens and the actual camera sensor. So there's basically no way to blow those pieces of dust out and the only way to fix it is to replace the entire lens unit, which can be purchased for about $20.
Now, WHY or HOW are dust particles getting stuck INSIDE the lens?? It's due to the owners of the phones DROPPING them or bumping them really hard into something. I can almost guarantee you that if we all never dropped our phone, even on the carpet or on some other soft material, then we would never have this purple splotch problem in our photos. By dropping your phone, it causes a shockwave of motion throughout your entire phone and when that hard "hit" reaches your little delicate camera lens, any small particles that might be lingering on the very edge of the lens or just on the edge of where the lens connects to the camera sensor, that "hit" from dropping it is what causes the dust to be thrust into the lens, thus causing purple spots when we shoot photos.
I guarantee you that every single person who has this purple spot problem has dropped their phone at least ONCE, whether it be on the hard ground or on some softer surface like on a carpet, rug, or even on a couch. If it hit hard enough, it is what causes the dust to be propelled through the small cracks between the lens and the camera sensor, thus causing the irrepairable problem of purple spots.
I know I have dropped my phone a handful of times and that's what caused the dust to get lodged into that area. So, yeah, it's HUMAN ERROR that causes this problem and it's not a hardware problem and that's exactly why Apple doesn't see fit to fix it for all of us. Why should they? If we all would have never dropped our phones, then we'd not be here in this forum talking about purple spots on our photos 🙂
