Major Camera/Camcorder Problem - Grainy Lines on Camera

Hello everyone.  I meant to register on this forum when I first purchased my Thunderbolt in mid December.  I'm currently on vacation in Seattle (with a few days of exploring and picture taking in front of me) and my Thunderbolt has decided to develop a pretty serious problem.  On that note... help!

The camera/camcorder for my phone has developed a problem where (depending upon the focus of the moment) the camera has MAJOR grainy colored lines on it.  I know that it depends on the lense's attempts to focus, or at least, the applications attempts to Auto Focus.  If I can manage to turn off auto focus when there are no lines visible, the picture is clear (but blurry!).  Otherwise, it comes and goes as I change focus.



I didn't drop the camera, I didn't throw it into a lake, I really don't know why this happened.  Such bad timing!

I have tried clearing data for the camera app... no luck.  I read something talking about reformatting the SD card, but there was no helpful description as to how to go about doing that.  If the problem persists through the entire vacation, I'm definitely going to try and have it looked at when I get back to Cincinnati on Friday of this week.

Any help would be so, so appreciated.  I have insurance via Sprint and don't mind paying to have it fixed if it comes to that, but if I can't fix it tonight I'm not going to be able to take pictures and videos for the rest of my trip in Seattle.  It is pretty frustrating, and is putting a damper on my entire trip.

EDIT: I should note that the smaller camera that faces the user works just fine - no problems there.  It isn't a universal camera problem - just a problem with the main camera that I really need. 

Seems like a nice forum here... glad to be here, even with the lame circumstances.  I still love my phone.   

Yeah, I'll have to take it to the Sprint store back home on Friday.  Thankfully, after tinkering with the settings for a little while and catching the camera app before it started to auto focus on something, I have auto focus turned off, and the display is usable.  The pictures won't be as sharp as they would have been otherwise, but at least now I can keep using it throughout my vacation, enjoy myself, then head home and get it taken care of.

C'est la vie.  It has been a great visit so far except for this.   

hello all ,
 ive had my thunderbolt for less than a month and i recently started noticing that when im taking pics of really bright light sources my screen shows grainy red lines. these lines also show up in the pictures. is there a fix to this?.. would anyone have some insight on what the issue could be? vie messed with setting and all reset the phone and the setting on the camera... this issue also interacts with other camera apps such as vignette, 360 and so forth.

I am experiencing similar problems with my new Thunderbolt and I just got it Monday!  Glad to know it's not just my phone.  I'm undergoing radiation for cancer treatment and thought the xrays might have gotten to it, even though the phone is in my purse across the room.