Lens scratches?

I read a recent complaint thread about lens which unfortunately was closed, so I made a new thread.

I haven't thought about the lens' durability until I read the thread and that got me worried. I can tell s/he was teasing the phone, but I'm still conscious about it when carrying the phone. I only put a screen protector and it doesn't cover the lens. Now the obvious question is: how does the lens hold up against scratches and cracks without protection? If the lens' glass is the same as previous generations, your experience with them would be nice to hear as well.

I have owned the original iPhone (with no case) for nine months and the 3G for close to two years (with an in-case slider) and never had a problem with the camera lens. The in-case slider has a recessed camera hole so that might have helped some and there are third party cases out now for the iPhone 4 that offer recessed camera holes.

If you want to use the phone without a case you can take a cheap screen protector and cut out a small square (or circle if you are precise) to cover just the lens. Or utilize front and back screen protectors and overlay the back protector on top of a manually cut square (or circular) cutout just for the lens. All back protectors and cases will have cutouts for the camera and flash so you'll have to make your own if you want to cover up the camera lens for some protection.

Yeah my 3g and 3gs never had any lens scratches, nor my mom's 3g or girlfriends 3gs. iPhone 4 had them in a matter of days. I believe the lens on the 3 series is glass and the 4 is cheap plastic.

Ghost Armor case solved

The Apple genius sent my iPhone in for repair on Thursday and I received my new replacement iPhone Fedex Saturday delivery! Lens is perfect of course, pictures look wonderful again (as wonderful as 2MP can get).

Now the challenge is to get the new lens to stay 'perfect'.

You can usually bet that if a thread was closed like that, it was do to the person being a troll, in which case, their "claims" are usually pretty suspect and shouldn't be trusted.

Schweb.

Do you have an iPhone 4?

sonoluminescent said:

Yeah my 3g and 3gs never had any lens scratches, nor my mom's 3g or girlfriends 3gs. iPhone 4 had them in a matter of days. I believe the lens on the 3 series is glass and the 4 is cheap plastic.

Click to expand...

The back of the iPhone 4 is glass, not plastic.

Apple - iPhone 4 - Design of the display, A4 processor, and more

sonoluminescent said:

Schweb.

Do you have an iPhone 4?

Click to expand...

Yes, I've had it since launch day.

If you're iPhone 4 is made of plastic, are you sure you have one?

The LENS. not the whole back.

I find it strange that just the lens is getting scratched and not the rest of the back of the phone.

Face palm. I don't find it strange, seeing as it is plastic.

dtravis7 said:

I find it strange that just the lens is getting scratched and not the rest of the back of the phone.

Click to expand...

Well I also wonder what's happening to that particular phone because it's not like there's a lot of people complaining about this.

sonoluminescent said:

Face palm. I don't find it strange, seeing as it is plastic.

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How do you know it's plastic?

Face Palm?

The camera lens is recessed a bit. Sure looks like it in the pics.

Also would you take say an expensive Canon or Nikon camera and rub keys on the lens?

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!? I didn't rub keys on anything. The phone stays in my left pocket, by itself.

sonoluminescent said:

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!? I didn't rub keys on anything. The phone stays in my left pocket, by itself.

Click to expand...

Obviously not unless your pockets are lined with sand paper?

Gosh I ALWAYS forget to take the sandpaper out. thank you.

Fine. Ignore a real issue if you want. Make jokes. Deny it when your phone lens gets scratched.

You asked how I know it's plastic.

1. It was scratched. The rest of the back of the phone was immaculate. The back was not covered.

2. Seeing that it was scratched, I felt it and tapped it and the surrounding area. It's a different material. Guess what? It's not a stronger or more scratch resistant material.

The Apple employee who did the exchange and another employee agreed that it was most likely plastic though they couldn't find specific information about it for sure being one or the other.

I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying if you're the only person who has complained about this, it's obviously not a big problem and it must be tied to the way you're treating your phone.

And my lens isn't scratched so I'm not denying anything.

I'm getting a little sick of you accusing me of something I've already explained I didn't do. Seeing as how this is my third iPhone, and that I bought a 3g as a gift for my mom and a 3gs for my girlfriend, and have convinced 2 friends to get iPhones, and convinced my girlfriend to drop $1400 on a MBP, your remarks are really tired. So please stop. I did nothing out of the ordinary to iP4. Had my 3GS since launch day up until iP4 launch day, and the 3GS lens is perfectly fine. And I obviously didn't use any sort of back screen protector for that. Again, I did nothing at all out of the ordinary to this phone AND I've only had it for a few weeks. (Keep in mind I did just get it exchanged the other day so my new one is scratch free and I will obviously be keeping a protector on it at all times. So when I say "the lens got scratched", I'm referring to the previous phone).

Thanks in advance for no longer accusing me of things you couldn't possibly know.

How about you try googling 'iPhone 4 lens scratch' before assuming things.

Sure, ok, you didn't do anything...your camera is scratching itself up.

Just curious that we're not seeing masses of people complaining about this or any media reporting on this issue (and you know they love to pick on the iPhone 4).

I think it's tiring that you're claiming it's an iPhone 4 defect, when it's clearly not a widespread issue. Maybe you just got a bad phone?