What the inside of a phone camera looks like

My phone was taking blurry pictures with black spots. Cleaning the front of the lens didn't help, so I took it apart to see what was messed up inside. Here's the camera on the back of a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone.

camera box (top)
lens (bottom)

Turns out the lens wasn't the problem, but a smudge on a light receptor panel at the back of the camera box. The long smudge appeared as a black spot when the lens focused on an object in front of the camera.

I dabbed at the smudge as best I could with a writing pen wrapped in a cloth, not having any adequate cleaning wipes at the time. The image did not turn out perfect afterwards, but the large black spot went away.

Image before

Image after

Image blurriness was caused by the lens not resting on top of the receptor panel. Inside the camera box there were very small beads that work as ball bearings to keep the lens in position.

My lens was jiggling up and down a bit. I found that if I pushed the lens into the box a little, the image came into focus better.

Loose lens

Snug lens

I used the tip of a pen to push the lens. Look at how the word 'Belkin' comes into focus. Not everything in the image looks better, though. The left side got sharper and the right side more blurry.

I didn't fix my camera much but at least I figured out why it's no good.