The 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus has arguably the best smartphone camera. It has significantly closed the gap between smartphone cameras and DSLRs with its dual-camera system and Portrait mode. The addition of telephoto lens allows users to change the points of view without adding an attachment. As is almost always the case with novel technologies, the iPhone 7 Plus’ camera is going haywire for some users.
The iPhone 7 Plus camera ‘dying’
BGR reports that they started receiving emails from iPhone 7 Plus users about three weeks ago. Users complained that their phone’s cameras were dying. Launching Apple’s camera app or a third-party camera would serve a black screen instead of an image preview. And more than one user is facing this problem.
Reddit user teryakiwok wrote in a post that they are “met with a black image preview” every time they opened the camera app. Sometimes, the user could see the images but all the photos were tinted green or purple. Other times the app would issue a false heat warning and shut down when the iPhone 7 Plus wasn’t even slightly warm, said the Reddit user.
It seems to be a hardware issue
Apple’s support forum is also flooded with similar complaints. One user wrote in Apple’s support forum that he was traveling abroad when his iPhone 7 Plus camera stopped working. The user tried restarts, soft reset, and restoring but with no luck. He gets a “dark screen” after turning on the camera.
It’s still unclear what’s causing the problem. But it appears to be a hardware issue rather than a software one. According to Phone Arena, the issue could be with a small flex cable that moves data. It could have resulted in faulty thermal register lines, which triggered the emergency heat warning even when the phone was not warm. Some users reported that the problem persisted before as well as after updating to iOS 10.2.
Apple offers to repair or replace affected devices
Fortunately, Apple is offering to repair or replace the affected units. If you own an iPhone 7 Plus and the camera app starts acting weird, go to the nearest Apple Store where it should be taken care of.
Though the iPhone 7 Plus is not as good as a DSLR, Apple wants you to believe that it is as good as a movie camera. In its recent ad titled Romeo and Juliet, the company said, “Your movies look like movies on iPhone 7.” The 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus boasts of dual 12MP high-speed sensors with f/1.8 aperture, OIS, new image signal processors, and a wide color gamut.
