iPhone 5 camera not working after ios 7 update

I have had a result!

Apple took my phone away to repair the faulty on/off switch and eventually gave me a brand new phone with a working switch and working camera!

Really happy now - though just wish they had fixed it in the first place without me having to go through all the aggravation and lack of functionality.

It has left a bad feeling about the company. They had already upset me when they stole my money on an itunes voucher which had been redeemed by a crook before I had even removed the silver security film and typed in the supposedly secure reference number. They must have known which account the value had been falsely redeemed on but chose to let me bear the cost of the crime against them.

No you did not have "a result" ! You had your phone exchanged under warranty. Most of people here have NO WARRANTY because if we did we would just exchange our phones as you did.

My phone is 20 months old and out of warranty. I suffered from the faulty on/off switch problem an Apple had previously refused to fix or exchange the phone.

When I took the phone in their diagnostics noticed the faulty camera and eventually they gave me a brand new replacement phone as the original could not be fixed.

I have had this issue off and on for about half a year on my iPhone 5. I tried all the things in your list as well, but today I tried something new and found that it "unstuck" my camera!

Here are the steps:

1. In Settings > General, turn Restrictions on if it isn't already.

2. Disable Camera. This will also disable any apps that use the camera service, like FaceTime. Apple's apps that depend on the camera service will also now be hidden from the icons on your home screen. This is worth pointing out because when you re-enable these apps, they will reappear but not necessarily in the same place. On my iPhone 5/iOS 7.1.2, the camera icon moved when I re-enabled it. Third party apps that use the camera service, like Snapchat, will probably not be hidden.

3. Re-enable Camera and any other apps that were restricted as a result of disabling the camera.

4. Try launching the camera app. When I tried these steps, I tried Snapchat first and it worked right away after having been frozen/stuck on the black screen. Then I tried the Camera app, and it took a couple seconds but the camera woke up and the black screen turned into the live view, as expected.

My guess is that maybe there is a bug in the way Restrictions persist on the phone. It seems that somehow a restriction for my camera got set without me ever turning Restrictions on, let alone restricting the camera. Furthermore, when the camera is restricted properly, the Camera app should be hidden on the home screen but it wasn't on mine.

Please let me know if this works for you. I'm not sure if anyone has tried this or written about it on this forum, but it worked for me when nothing else did.

I have had this issue off and on for about half a year on my iPhone 5. I tried something new when the problem came up today, and to my surprise it worked. The idea is to toggle off and on the Camera restriction in your settings, even if you have never used Restrictions before.

Here are the steps:

1. In Settings > General, turn Restrictions on if it isn't already.

2. Disable Camera. This will also disable any apps that use the camera service, like FaceTime. Apple's apps that depend on the camera service will also now be hidden from the icons on your home screen. This is worth pointing out because when you re-enable these apps, they will reappear but not necessarily in the same place. On my iPhone 5/iOS 7.1.2, the camera icon moved when I re-enabled it. Third party apps that use the camera service, like Snapchat, will probably not be hidden.

3. Re-enable Camera and any other apps that were restricted as a result of disabling the camera.

4. Try launching the camera app. When I tried these steps, I tried Snapchat first and it worked right away after having been frozen/stuck on the black screen. Then I tried the Camera app, and it took a couple seconds but the camera woke up and the black screen turned into the live view, as expected.

My guess is that maybe there is a bug in the way Restrictions persist on the phone. It seems that somehow a restriction for my camera got set without me ever turning Restrictions on, let alone restricting the camera. Furthermore, when the camera is restricted properly, the Camera app should be hidden on the home screen but it wasn't on mine.

Please let me know if this works for you. I'm not sure if anyone has tried this or written about it on this forum, but it worked for me when nothing else did.

I haven't read the entire thread, but has anyone tried downloading another camera app and seeing if that works ?? I did that today with a friend's phone with this camera problem (black screen, will not take photos) and the new camera app works flawlessly. It does not integrate with the OS and photos must be transferred to the camera roll manually through the app. But, the camera works now.

Thanks to your posting. I hv just tried that and it worked. However my camera didn't actually come back after I re-started the phone. so I pressed that area hard again, and it came on! So perhaps it's just about pressing that area, rather than restarting, that solved the problem? Cheers!

Hi steveg_cs,

I did tried all those but nothing worked, sorry. I tried the Snapchat and CameraAwesome, but no positive results with any of them.

Adding my name to this list! After updating to ios7 the rear camera on my iphone 5 stopped working. I get a black screen and the camera app freezes if I try to use the rear camera. I tried everything, restore, reset, pinch and squeeze, I took it to the 'genius' bar who told me it was a hardware problem and as it was out of warrantee I would have to part with a ridiculous amount of money to get a replacement. It's been like this for over 4 months and I now just live with the issue and awkwardly use the front camera if it's important! I have noticed that other apps such as Instagram and snapchat no longer give me the option to turn the camera and automatically open with the front camera, strange! The fact that apple haven't responded and continue to call this problem a hardware issue is appalling, they're practically sending people to android!

Sorry :/ I realized after that my breakthrough was only temporary, and that the camera froze up again. Toggling the restrictions helped unlock my rear-facing camera, but my front-facing camera is still unrecognized/restricted/broken/frozen.

I wish there were a more direct way to contact Apple about this. The way people use cameras on phones today, having a buggy camera is a major problem, not a minor inconvenience.

Hi. I deeply examined all the Android tablets and I REALLY decided to sell my iPad Retina 32GB and get a Samsung Galaxy TAB S 10.5" tablet!

This tablet is just cooler and even better than iPad Air: Better & bigger screen (Amoled), faster CPU (8 core), lighter, thinner, supports SD cards...

Thank you Apple for forcing me to look for an "alternative" device, (Jus' like your genious(!) employees mentioned on the phone/support line) because I DID found a better one. I would miss this powerful TAB S tablet without your support, Apple!

And guess what! Its rear and front cameras are all working perfectly, even its OS is KitKat 4.4!

Dear friend, you can be sure that Apple know this problem about the faulty cameras very well. Do not worry about it. I myself directly got in contact with them a lot of times, mentioned them about these posts, told them to read their own discusion boards! They told me that "forums can be full of wrong informations, and they do not take them into consideration!" There are also tons of problem tickets about it.

What you can worry about is; why Apple does not do anything about this problem, or doesn't even make an announcement about it.

This is my situation exactly. Updated a completely functional iPad to IOS 7 and now have an iPad with no working camera or video. I literally read this entire thread and several others and tried every suggested "fix." After three solid days devoted to trying to trouble shoot this, I've made an appointment with Apple repair but I don't have high hopes since my iPad is no longer under warranty. I can't believe how many people have had this identical problem --going back months and months--and Apple has done nothing to address it. I ran across several news stories about the multitude of complaints so it is not as if it is confined to Apple message boards. I was getting ready to purchase a MacBook and this has totally changed my mind.

Sir, thank you so much for your fix.

It worked for me...I appreciate your help

Sir, thank you very much!

i had this problem for about 3 month and i searched the hole www for help but nothing ! and know everything works perfekt !

i appreciate your help

kind regards

Lau