Chosen Solution
I recently just had what looks like a piece of dirt get into my rear facing camera. Is this even possible? I don’t see any scratches on the lens but there is a smudge that shows up on both stills and video. I can zoom past it with the digital zoom so I don’t think its the cameras CCU. Can the lens/cover be taken off to clean?
Using a good magnifier can you see anything between the cover glass and the camera lens? That’s really the only place you could have some dirt. You’ll need to pop the cover glass off to clean the glass or the lens. Use a slightly dampened photographers lens cleaning cloth with photographers lens cleaning solution. Be careful here as you don’t want to scratch the lens. Other cleaners will likely leave streaks. If it’s not there then its inside the camera unit which is sealed, If you have extended AppleCare I would bring it in for Apple to fix. Otherwise it’s a new camera unit.
You have to open up the phone to extract the camera module, if there is nothing externally visible, then the image sensor is the problem. Which cannot be repaired without replacing the entire module
