The camera on a man’s iPhone 14 Pro was left totally destroyed after attending a DJ party where lasers were being used.
The man from the U.K. tells PetaPixel that he had already taken a few videos during the night but on his last clip he noticed the image start to break up with grain and colors.
“At first I thought it might just be a glitch with the camera app, so I restarted the app but that made no difference,” he says.
“I then downloaded an alternative camera app and tried restarting the phone but when nothing helped. I realized it was definitely a problem with the actual camera caused by the lasers the DJ was using.”
The damage proved to be irreparable and he has since purchased another iPhone and done a hard reset on the broken iPhone 14 Pro.
“I’m still waiting to hear from my insurance, frustratingly I can buy a used genuine camera module for around £50, but due to Apple’s software locks on hardware components I’ve read that the phone would display warnings/error messages,” he explains.
“So currently I have a perfectly good iPhone 14 Pro that I’d struggle to sell with a faulty camera.”
The man says that while he has received plenty of comments about “how cool” the photos are, nobody actually wants to buy it.
It’s not the first time PetaPixel has reported on a party laser breaking a camera sensor, it happened at a rap gig in Naples, Italy last year too (video of the incident above).
In 2021, Sony, which provides camera sensors for Apple, officially published a warning on its website stating that it is aware that lasers can cause damage to its cameras’ image sensors.
“Do not directly expose the Lens to beams such as laser beams. This may cause damage to the image sensor and cause the camera to malfunction,” the warning published in July 2021 reads.
“Note: In either outdoor or indoor environment when there is a laser display, the tendency of direct or indirect (laser beam bounce from reflective object) damage to the camera CMOS Sensor is still very high.”