Having problems taking pictures with your Smartphone? When you
click on your camera to take a picture do you only get a black screen? This
isn’t a very common issue for Smart phones but it sure can be troublesome. Usually
when this happens the phone won’t be able to take a picture or record a video
at all. This article will go over some of the possible causes as well as some
possible solutions on how to try and get a smart phones camera to start working
properly again.
Cameras showing a black screen can be hard to fix
This issue can be a hard thing to fix and get working properly
again. If the issue is software related than chances are a lot better that you
might be able to fix it. I just want to stress that this can be a pretty bad
malfunction and there’s probably only about a 50% chance of actually fixing
this problem.
Power cycle your phone
Simply power your phone off for 10 seconds and then power it
back on and check your camera, if you haven’t already done this already. This
is referred to as a soft reset and this simple trick can fix minor software
related issues.
Battery pull
Pulling out the battery of a phone when it is powered on is
another type of soft reset that can get a phone to start working properly
again. This causes no loss of data. This option is not available on all phones,
and is only an option on phones with removable batteries. If your battery is
built in and the phone is not designed to remove the battery then skip this
step and proceed by checking your applications.
Remove any third party camera apps
Start out by uninstalling any third party camera applications
that you have downloaded to the phone. The phone might have received an update
for its software and the developer of the app might not have had the chance to
update their app yet.
Start uninstalling other applications
If you have removed any third party camera apps or if you don’t
have or use any of these types of apps then try to think about the last app
that you downloaded or an app you might have updated or downloaded around the
time that this issue started to occur and go ahead and uninstall it.
A bad app can be the culprit of this issue so continue through
your applications removing the most recently downloaded or updated applications
first. After uninstalling an application open your camera and see if the phone
is still displaying a black screen.
Soft reset
Soft reset the phone once more after uninstalling your
applications, by powering the phone off, preferably by removing the battery,
counting to 10, and then reinsert the battery and powering the phone back on.
Hard reset
If you have cleaned up all of your applications and your phone
is still showing a black screen instead of the camera screen then what you’re
going to want to do is perform a full backup on your phone, saving all your
important information and then perform a full reset on the device erasing all
data from the phone. If it’s a software bug, glitch, virus etc than wiping the
phone should fix the issue. If you have a Smartphone running on the Android
operating system.
Hardware issue
If the camera is still showing a black screen after performing a
hard reset chances are that this issue is hardware related meaning the actual
camera piece is malfunctioning on the phone.
Disclaimer: Use caution before attempting this next suggestion, you don’t
want to physically break the phone accidently; it will void the phones
warranty.
I know of instances where the actual camera on the phone can
become dislodged and of course cause it to malfunction. By taking the battery
out of your phone (if possible) and making sure the phone is powered off and
then applying pressure to the actual camera lens itself, firm pressure
but be careful you don’t want to break your phones screen or anything else on
the device, it can pop the camera lens back into place and fix the issue.
Again use this step with caution as you do not want to cause any
damage to your device and this step is not guaranteed to work in all
circumstance.
Review your other options
If accessing the camera still takes you to a black screen or
your phone still won’t allow you to take a picture or record a video than you
might need to look into other options.
If your camera starts working again but the pictures are blurry,
or if the original issue was that the phones camera was taking blurry pictures
and then started showing a black screen then the lens in your camera is
probably damaged or broken. Read the article mentioned above about alternate
options. It mentions warranty, which might be your best bet if you don’t have
any liquid or physical damage and you have had the phone for less than a year,
you can also look into taking it into a repair shop to see if they can swap out
the parts.
Hopefully it was just a software bug and the reset fixed it, if
so enjoy your working phone if not look into warranty, repair, insurance, or
some of the other replacement options listed in the article mentioned above.
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