iPhone 6 does not turn on - Long Screw Problem?

[D_R]

Hi,

I have a iPhone 6 on my desk. The phone does not turn on after a display change. When I connect the charger, the phone gets 900mA. I tried to do a hard reboot holding the Power and the Home button. The Phone then drew for a short time about 300mA and then returned again to 900mA.

Under the microscope I saw something that looks like a "long screw damage" to me. And the FL1151 is missing.

Sorry, but I hand't seen a long screw damage before. Is this how it looks like? Is it worth doing something with this board?

Hmm.. The board reduced the size of the images. Here are the original images:

https://db.tt/F0aymQZQ
https://db.tt/V7PwcoXA
https://db.tt/y2freNEe

 

[larossmann]

That is long screw damage. I wouldn't do that for less than $600 and data recovery only, screw using the phone again. That is long screw.

 

[D_R]

Thank you for your answer. The phone is not here for data recovery, so it's going back. But I have another follow up question, you might be able to answer. Today I saw Jessa's video about the long screw damage on a board for data recovery. She wasn't able to fix the problem herself and gave the board to one of her "helper".

I think on the ifixit board Jessa was asked if it's possible just to take the NAND Chip from the board and put it on a working Logicboad. And Jessa said, that this is not possible. And I wonder why. The new gadget from china is to turn your 16GB iPhone into a 128GB by replacing the NAND Chip on the board. Or to remove the iCloud lock by taking 3 or 4 Parts from the Board into an external programmer and reflash these.

So I think, that all of the user specific data is on this 3 or 4 Chips. Why do you have to restore traces on a dead logic board to recover data instead of just swapping the parts to a known working Logicboard?

 

[larossmann]

I think you have to swap the baseband, the CPU, and the NAND and some other shit to make that possible and by the time you do all of that shit it isn't worth it.

Fun fact: Jessa sent a phone to drivesavers once, which is a $2400 or $2600 no-fix-no-fee service. She thought they would either

a) Magically remove the NAND chip and remove the data.
b) Transfer everything over to a bare board and grab the data that way.

Neither of which they did. It was a very lucrative data recovery, and she was just curious - what would the "best" company in the industry do differently from her?

NOTHING!!!

She got to speak directly to the person who worked on it. They have the same troubleshooting process. The dude even said he'd been meaning to come to our class... you know, with us idiots that fix boards for $39-$425. SERIOUSLY?????

Don't get it twisted, I don't want to appear as if I am putting down or insulting anyone that wishes to learn from us - but if you're charging those dollar amounts, you'd better know 10x more than duke & I combined!!

So a multi-million dollar company charging over $2000 doesn't think that is worth the effort. It says a lot. You could transfer all that shit over, but is this really worth it for a phone? Running the traces is actually much easier, and less risky, than removing the CPU/NAND/baseband without damaging them, reballing them, and soldering them to a new board. That's just too much fucking work when you consider that if it doesn't work, you get paid nothing.

When you look at how much there is in the stack where you can make $50 for a filter in 3 seconds, $99 for a connector in 2 minutes, $200-$400 for easy data recovery.. why bother fucking with high risk stuff that will take hours only to find out something went wrong and you're not getting paid?

In the middle of bumfuck nowhere, where charging $200 for a repair means someone can pay their rent for a year I'd understand... if they were bored, and had nothing better to do. It's all about culture. Some places in the middle of nowhere get one laptop to fix every week and a half and that pays for their living.. I have 10-30 new devices in the shelf every day, so I pick the devices that have the maximum chance of not being a pain in the ass.

During downtime I will figure out the pains in the ass because once they are figured out they will no longer be a pain in the ass later. However, I cannot imagine a world within which transferring all those ICs to a donor board, CNCing off the old chip, is not a pain in the ass.

 

[rany]

Like Louis said, the major challenge is transferring more than one chip, and the toughest of all is transferring the CPU without shorting something like the RAM during soldering onto the target board. Good luck with that.

 

[D_R]

Like Louis said, the major challenge is transferring more than one chip, and the toughest of all is transferring the CPU without shorting something like the RAM during soldering onto the target board. Good luck with that.

I get your point. But if some chines can swap the three chips in the backyard with crappy tools to get rid of the iCloud Lock, why can't we do the same in our modern labs with expensive tools just for data recovery?

 

[larossmann]

I get your point. But if some chines can swap the three chips in the backyard with crappy tools to get rid of the iCloud Lock, why can't we do the same in our modern labs with expensive tools just for data recovery?

Because they have no lives and get paid one dollar an hour. Their employers can afford to pay them for spend two weeks of time invested into on one phone for the hell of it. Can you?

If you can, then you can do it! However, for most people this is not economical. I live in one of the most expensive cities on Earth, the store is $4350/month, my apartment is $1915/month, the store payroll is probably three times all of that combined, and let's not even get started on the taxes and everything else involved in running a business in this ripoff of a city. These devices can only make $200-$400 for each repair, so if I can't fix it in 20 minutes it goes in the garbage. No more time to be spent than that!

There are lots of people who contrast themselves to people in other countries negatively because the other guy could fix something but they couldn't. What if you had the luxury of a $500/yr cost of living? You'd probably figure out more of what comes in your door as well.

Realize culture has a lot to do with it here.

 

[rany]

I get your point. But if some chines can swap the three chips in the backyard with crappy tools to get rid of the iCloud Lock, why can't we do the same in our modern labs with expensive tools just for data recovery?

I was going to write a very long response but would just say that: business plan + funding + R&D! If you have a business plan that justifies the cost, and enough funding the get the right machinery and acquire the needed skill (R&D), sure why not.
To do it manually you need to afford a lot of trial and error and very low success rate - specially at the beginning. A8 is stacked and soldering at the base happens when the top layer balls are starting to ooze out. Very tough to reproduce consistently outside the original manufacturing process, in my humble opinion.