xz3 camera and flahlight become unavailable after over heated

[MervynYelt]

Sometimes when i open camera, it says 'error,unknown error' and flashlight is unavailable.

Then i find it happens when the  phone is over heating. But I didn't use camera at those time.

To get it back to normal, I have to restart the phone after it cools down.

So is camera and flashlight affected by the temperature even if i don't use them?

[MaksimS]

So guys, it's start working acidently w/o any changes... I'm not sure what going on 

[MaksimS]

Today after restart it's stop work again with the same error. 😭

[Frankrabbel]

I've had this issue since month 2 I bought my Xperia XZ3 right after it came out.

I'm a long time Sony Client and this is very disappointing. Never buying Sony again. 

The issue scoping is as follows:

The error message is a black screen with the text: "unknown error"

Rebooting in Safe Mode helped me get rid of it 5 times.

And restarting phone helped aswell a couple of times. 

Software update, software repair, deleting phone cache, camera cache, disabling camera, clear camera data, restore from fabric. All of those didn't help. 

Sometimes the problem gets solved on its own. You just open the camera and it's suddenly working.

Other camera apps like Facebook, Instagram, etc just don't open the camera. 

There is one Camera App which says the following when starting:

"Unable to open camera. Maybe it's being used by another app" 

Now I've been two months without camera because none of the above mentioned actions work anymore and it's pissing me off!!!

What pisses me even more is the incompetence of the support team, who tell you to repair your phone at a shop, when it's clearly a software issue (because if it wasn't, Safe Mode and Restart wouldn't have helped at the beginning).

Now you better come up with an update for this because since I had the problem the first time, there is more and more people reporting this.

This is most complete description you're gonna get about this problem and I spent 800€ on a phone with an amazing camera which I cannot use since one month after I bought the phone. 

Now goddamn fix it!! 

[Strampke]

When it happens to every user it must be system software.

When it happens to some users it must be the device and/or the software you installed in it.

If it is software on your device it should be ok when you do a software repair and do NOT restore your backup in the first place.

If the problem persists it must be hardware.

BIGCURSE

[MaksimS]

So, today with the latest update camera start working. Is this hardware pb? 😉 

[MervynYelt · Accepted solution]

Finanlly I find an easy solution to solve this. All we need to do is just power off and put it in the refrigerator. Take it out after a couple of hours and boot the phone, it works. If you put it in the freezer, half an hour would be enough.

But it's not a once-for-all solution. Problem still occurs when phone gets over headted next time. I do this about 4-6 times per month.

The main concern is I have no idea if it will do any harm to my phone.

[MervynYelt]

Maybe your phone has cooled down enough. When we use phone it produces heat, so the phone will not get cooled down easily unless power it off and leave it alone for some days.

[judroid]

Use third party camera apps like OPEN CAMERA to bypass heat issues

[htf1]

I have the exactly same problem, but my phone also was already in repair twice...

The phone is actually new enough, but even Software Repairing only fixes this for 2-3 camera openings

[MaksimS]

So, now my camera is completely off with error message: "Unknown error"