It's pretty clear that the lens is in a deeper "well" in the white model. This is consistent with the rumor that light was impinging on the camera in the white model. What you need to do is limit all light that isn't coming from directly in front of the lens. No light from the side, and definitely no light from the inside of the camera. The way to fight it if you have an SLR? Invest in an old fashioned thing called a bellows, which shields the lens from any light that isn't coming from the area you can focus on, and which doesn't do anything but add glare or make blacks in the picture more like dark gray. This deeper camera acts like a bellows, I presume, blocking any light coming through the white, more translucent body.
As mentioned, a bellows does not surround a lens, it is a means to alter magnification. In fact, a bellows (or the portion of a modern macro lens that is equivalent to a bellows) will not have any lens elements in it at all.
I believe that's also what the little aluminum trim ring around the camera sensor is used for too to block out the light from the translucent body and the LED flash. The prototype iPhone 4 never had that ring I believe.
It's all just ridiculous. The lens blocks light itself. No lens is simply glass, it would never work at all, who would make such a stupid product? How would it hold together? A lens, esp in the case of a large SLR lens, is many glass/plastic elements. Here's a standard
lens, look at the diagram at the bottom of the 8 elements and the positioning. (and there must be at least 2 in the iPhone lens) They have to be held in their respective positions by something around the outside. The suggestions of "light leakage" imply that the surrounding material would have to be translucent....what, more glass? Transparent aluminum?
The photo in the OP clearly shows black plastic and silver metal as the lens surround, independent from the rest of the phone or the color of the phone.
Look at that picture. The lens on the left has more plastic in it, which I suppose could block light more easily than less, but that's the one from a black phone. Shouldn't it be the other way around for this theory to have any teeth at all? It's probably just a newly or differently sourced lens, and if they took apart new black phones they'd find the same newer one in some of those.
The thickness issue is within manufacturing tolerances, I would guess. Again, if we could measure each and every brand new phone, we'd no doubt be able to find a black one that is thicker than a white one. This is the problem for case makers, always has been. What no one is thinking about is the size of the cases, those also will have some size variation within the same model line.
