As you know, we here at VXLabs are of the educated opinion that the HTC Desire Z is an absolutely brilliant telephone. However, recently we noticed that some of our phones (at least two) started producing very blurry photos. See this test picture of my microwave for example:

Blurry-appearing microwave, in reality quite sharp!

This is of course quite irritating, especially in a phone that is otherwise sheer brilliance. No amount of moist-cloth lens cleaning could improve the results. Fortunately I came across this forum thread, where it was suggested either to replace the whole phone back plate including lens, or to have the phone repaired by the service centre, or to clean the lens with a q-tip and some toothpaste. The first two options either costing money or requiring a telephone still within its guarantee were quickly eliminated. Although the third option, suggested by forum user allanl-o, sounds strange, we wanted to explore it, for science’s sake of course. As an aside, the lenses of our two test telephones as well as that of the thread started looked like this (picture courtesy of xudsa II USERT, the thread started):

What your lens probably looks like if you’re taking really blurry pictures.

It seems that there’s some kind of coating that has started to flake off. In any case, it turns out that the mild abrasive in the tooth paste and a minute of two’s rubbing with a q-tip is just enough to clean up the glass in front of the lens completely, resulting in mega sharp photos again. Look at my microwave, now as sharp in the photo as it is in reality:

Microwave, sharp in reality and in the photo!

We’ve performed this procedure on two different HTC Desire Z phones, in both cases with great results. Let us know in the comments if this worked for you!