Q: IPhone 5 in iOS7 flashlight and camera not working

I had this problem... Tried everything but what worked for me was letting the battery run completely flat and once I powered up again the camera and flashlight work.

I am having the same issue. When I open the camera app, from anywhere, it shows no picture - just black as if I have a lens cap on the camera. I can see the camera button and the flash auto/on/off, HDR text etc. If I try to reverse the camera, the grid animates away, but it remains black. It also seems the app freezes at various times and I cant switch options like the flash setting. Sometimes I can - seems random but I havent played around to determine the conditions.

My flashlight icon from bottom-swipe gesture is not greyed out, but when I press it, the icon illuminates as if it is working, but there is no LED/Flash activity.

My phone was also getting very hot and draining battery rapidly. I belive that if you turn your camera flash to off, and keep the flashlight icon OFF, that it doesnt get as hot. Not scientifically certain about this but my phone appears to have returned to normal battery performance.

I tried to let the phone drain to death and recharge, but that did not fix it.

I backed up and wiped my phone, and that did not fix it either.

I took it to the Genius bar and they ran a diagnostic, and found nothing wrong. He even opened the phone to make sure the cable was still properly seated, but that was not the issue.

My phone is 2 weeks out of warranty, so they said unfortunately nothing they can do but have me pay for a replacement or repair, but that they wouldnt recommend repair because they dont know what is wrong and it could cost more than just replacing the phone if they have to replace a bunch of things that dont end up fixing the problem.

The tech's opinion was that the LED might have been left on for a long time, and may have burned the motherboard or something.

At this point, I am just using the phone without a camera.

Scratch that - I just did a wipe again and the flashlight worked - The difference is that I did no restore. I setup the phone as a new phone.

This means whatever the issue was, was captured in the backup, so I cannot restore from any of my backups without also restoring this problem.

This did the trick for me. Had used the flashlight from the lock screen the night before. Next morning camera wouldn't work and flashlight was greyed out. Played around with flash and hdr settings from lock screen and voila, everything went back to normal.

So I think I've fixed this issue.

   One function that the new IOS installed was the do not disturb no notification lock.

In order to get the flashlight back on ( at least it worked for me) you simply have to toggle Do Not Disturb on and off again. This should allow you to use the flash on both your camera and iphone/iPod in general. Hope this helps!

- CJM; the dyke gamer you wish you had met at the bar

Mine has done the samething for the first time and if you open the camera there is a yellow warning triangle next to the flash icon, if you tap on it you get notification saying "Flash Is Disabled, The iPhone needs to cool down before you can use the flash" Let it cool and it works fine!

I had the exact same problem and it appeared out of the blue. I tried all the recommendations listed above and none of them worked so i took my phone to a nonofficial tech-support (I'm out of warranty), the technician agreed to open it at no charge and he checked the camera and the motherboard, he switched the camera with one he knew that was working to check if the problem was with the motherboard, if it was so the only solution is to change it. It happened that the motherboard was working fine and he told me that my camera was the problem, so he put everything back in place and returned my phone. Then when i tried the camera, to my surprise, it was working perfectly! So guys i recommend you to go to a tech-support and try the same thing i did..

Same problem here. Greyed out flashlight from the control center. This is what I did to fix it:

1. Close all apps

2. Lock the phone (screen off)

3. Press the lock/unlock button and from the locked screen open control center and launch the timer app.

4. Lock the phone

5. Press the lock/unlock button and from the locked screen open control center and push the play icon. This needs to play a song from your playlist.

6. Lock the phone

7. Press the lock/unlock button and from the locked screen slide the camera icon up from the bottom right hand corner to the launch the camera app. Do not take any photos, just count about 5 seconds and then press the home button to exit.

8. Now slide the control center up, the flashlight should now work.

I did this, completely doubting it would work, but when i did, the flashlight did work! The flashlight did, but the camera still would not function, so i restarted my phone (hold lock+home button), tried the flashlight then camera and it started working again. Thanks for the tip

This is not at all a good thing. My phone is under warranty but I should not have to replace it because of a software issue created by the manufacturer. I went big talk big for apple and now this crap first time iphone and cost too much to have simplistic , ignorant issues , I dont like trading my stuff others feel okey dokey with it. I have customized this and now I got to replace it less than 6months thinking I should maybe go back to android at least if you take care of them they work and if not they only get physical issues.

Thanks so much! Your post got my flashlight/flash to work again

My flashlight was not turning on and my flash was not working when I took pictures. I went to the "Do not disturb" in Settings, turned it off and on and my flash and flashlight were working again. So very happy!

it worked !!

I Turned on Do Not Disturb from the control center and  left it on for a few seconds n turned it off.

N My flash started working again.

But my camera still doesn't work. It shows a black screen.

Any other trick to make it work ??

thanks !

Same issue here. Seems like enough people have an issue that Apple would get their act together and help. Instead of their standard line to fix everything it's a hardware issue so do a restore. How about you stop releasing faulty updates and fix the problem for us.

Absolute genius!!!