Chosen Solution
Hello. I’m 14 and have been repairing iPhones for just over a year now. My cousin was on holiday just before christmas in the Caribbean. She bought a waterproof case from Apple and was taking photos In the sea. I’d seen previous results and they were very good. However, on the last day the case let sea water in. She contacted me when she was home, I told her not to try and switch it on or to charge it, but she had done both on holiday in panic. Apple have confirmed they will replace the phone but there are many valued photos etc on the phone. Taking it apart, corrosion near the bottom was bad. Removing the battery removed one of the four pins for the battery connector. I scrubbed the board clean with a toothbrush and IPA. It’s cleaned up well, and looks normal apart from the battery connector. Earlier today I removed the 3 removable logic board shields and searched for damage. I can’t see any burn marks etc? got a new dock and screen and tried to power up the device using a charger without the phones battery, but the phone remained dead. It didn’t connect with iTunes but I don’t know if re assembling the phone to put it into dfu mode would make iTunes recognise it? I’m waiting for my dad to get me some more IPA and I will soak the logic board in an ultrasonic bath. Can anyone help me, any advice to why it won’t come on? is it completely dead? Thanks in advance, Sam.
Sam–my advice is to send the board out for battery connector repair–it’s about $20-30 on eBay and very straightforward if you have experience. You will certainly fail, like we all did, the first time you try it. This phone has a high likelihood of having salvageable data, so you might not want it to be your test case. If you insist, the battery connector repair is done under the microscope with flux and a soldering iron. Hot air will melt the connector. There are all sorts of tips that you learn just from experience–in the first me I did, I couldn’t understand why pad #1 and #4 (+ and Gand) were like mud, while solder flowed fine on the other pads. I assumed it just needed more heat, and ended up knocking off tiny components that I had to replace later–and didn’t have the equipment or skills to do that either. Fast forward a few months, and now the job takes about ten minutes tops. Good luck Jessa
The top pin is BATT VCC, it supplies electrical power for the entire phone. Cell phone logic boards are usually designed to be only powered on with functioning batteries attached. Simply plugging the charger in would not work
