Gadgetory

hands-on Abell and recently I noticed that the pictures I was taking on my Apple iPhone 5 we're turning out hazy I look closely at the back of the lens and notice that there was actually dust trapped inside the glass I don't know how it got there but I'm going to show you how to clean out your iPhone 5s rear camera you're gonna need some tools for this project I've got a P two pentalobe screwdriver I picked up from I fix it I also got this spudger tool though a credit card can also work in a pinch there's some suction cups here I'm gonna use this screwdriver to help pull on one of the suction cups got a lens cleaner pen and some compressed air all right now to start off we're gonna remove the two pentalobe screws from the bottom of the iPhone and use a little screwdriver here and this is pretty easy to do but the tricky part is not losing the screws I'm glad I have a white table here if you don't have a white table to do this just get a nice sheet of white paper and try not to do this over a floor or a carpet or anywhere you're gonna lose these screws once you've got those out next step was we're gonna separate the swing from the base of the phone now I notice that it comes up best when you've got the suction cups here near the home button it'll kind of pull up this way the first time I tried it it was really tough it didn't seem like we were gonna come off but subsequent attempts were a little bit easier I'm gonna use the screwdriver here that's kind of loop into this hook whatever kind of suction cups you have is probably gonna be a different thing let's see the trick is get it going but not pull too hard where you're gonna rip this thing right off cuz there's some very delicate little ribbon cables in here that if you ripped out would be very bad so now I've got just a little bit of it open here on the end I'm gonna use the spudger tool coming here move it around kind of will unclip it from the sides top I think the suction cups off we have here now when you first lift up under the hood you're probably gonna notice some dust right away you can use the compressed air to clean some of that out this were a full camera replacement we'd be tempted to pull out these cables and be able to take the screen entirely off to really get access to the camera but since we're just gonna be cleaning it out what we can do is just twist this gently and you'll notice the cameras right here using just your fingernail or one of these tools you can just a little bit pull it back and there you have access to the glass cover for the lens and the lens itself I can use the lens cleaning tool first clean the lens very gently they move over to the glass that's covering the lens and then if you see any other dirt and grime around there you can just rub that away or you can even use the compressed air to blast out anything that might be remaining alright once it looks good I'm gonna fold that camera back into place gently I'm gonna twist the cover back into place - and now starting with the earpiece side I'm gonna plant that back in and then slowly squeeze back towards the home button kind of like you're squeezing out a tuba toothpaste I'll squeeze back in the place the last thing we needed to do is put those little tiny screws back in the bottom a little magnetic tip on the screwdriver let's hold the screw in place I fix it also sells a little iPhone liberation kit that replaces these little pentalobe screws with standard Philips style screws we'll make it a little easier if you ever need to access the innards of this phone again later but for now putting the old ones back it's working just fine I'm gonna power the phone back on check out the camera and if all went well your lens should be crystal clear so there you go that's how to clean out the rear camera on your Apple iPhone 5 more tips like this you can go over cnet.com / -