Chosen Solution

A few days ago my phone had coffee spilled on it. Yeah bad. I took it to a repair shop and they cleaned it. They said the motherboard was fine, but that the battery, proximity sensor, ear speaker, and LCD needed to be replaced. Over $200 later, I got my phone back. Just last night. I’m not technology savvy and I need to take it back because there are issues I see. I wanted to get advice from someone who is. First thing I noticed is that now, the home button seems to be raised. When I run my finger over it, it feels rough around the edges of the button. It also wiggles a little bit now. I never noticed these before. Second, the screen doesn’t seem to move as smoothly and is not as responsive as it used to be. Sometimes I have to press it two or three times to click on something. Not all the time though. Also, the 3D Touch doesn’t work right. Sometimes I have to press a lot harder, or sometimes it won’t work at all. I googled a way to test the screen and one person suggested using a doodle app and running your finger diagonally very slow and see if it’s really wavy and he showed examples with 3 different phones, one including an iPhone. In his test, the iPhone did the best. In my test, I got the wavy lines like one of the other models in his video. Also, when I scroll slowly down or up a page, it’s choppy. Another thing I noticed is that when I am on a phone call, the sensor that turns the screen off when you have your phone to your ear doesn’t work right. It will turn off and then back on and off and back on. That causes me to end up pressing the mute button with my cheek. I’m pretty sure these are not apple standard parts, but shouldn’t I expect better quality? Even now, while typing, it’s not as responsive as it once was. It selects different letters and I have to backspace a lot. I have a feeling they are going to try and stiff me on this because of the water damage, but I just wanted an opinion from someone more knowledgeable about whether the quality should be better than what I got. Please help! :). Thank you! Edit: I wanted to add.. any technical terms or things that I could say to them that would help me convince them to get my phone back to a better state would be extremely helpful!! :)

I am going to try to explain what I believe are the issues for each of your concerns.

  1. The home button being raised is probably due to the fact of over tightened screws on the inside that holds the home button or the glass isn’t as thick as the original screen.
  2. The home button moving around a bit is caused by the fact that there is a gasket that is sealed (adhered) during the original manufacture of your phone and that seal is broken whenever the home button is removed during repair. It’s hard to recreate this seal as the adhesive may not stick like it originally did.
  3. The touch issues and 3d touch issues are due to the fact that the repair shop didn’t use an original apple screen. Words like OEM and high quality get thrown around, but I can tell you from experience that the part they used is not an original apple screen (unless it just happens to be defective). The reason I am confident about this is because most of the big time US suppliers who sell after market and mid grade parts will tell you that 3d touch isn’t as responsive. I’ve purchased screens from several manufacturers and know this to be true. All the original apple screens I have purchased do not have these issues. 1 and 2 arent that big of an issue, although they can be frustrating. 3 is an issue your repair shop should take care of. However, you’re still going to have issues with the 3d touch unless you ask them to use an original apple part, but you’ll more than likely be charged more as the parts on average cost 30 dollars more.

As Lead tech of a franchisee, our store would warranty all of the pieces we install. so as long as the piece installed is causing the issue, we would fix that at no charge to guarentee the repair. however, Water can be a little Dicey. Water can damage circuts in ways that isnt black and white. our store would re-replace all the parts we fixed, and if that fixes the issue, it would be under warranty. if it doesnt fix the issues, then it means the water damage blew out components on the board required to properly operate, and stablize the components. That would not be warranty. i would take it in to see if they CAN fix it with replacing the parts. shops do not warranty water damage on its own, because water can cause issues at any point in time. even if you clean it out, if a filter is blown, a signal spike could fry out another component weeks or even months down the line. i hope the problem is the modular components themselves, and not board level.

IMO, Knockoff screens are just bad quality . go to apple for screens but with water damage it’s never gonna be right. Apple will sell you replacement of same device for less than new one .