Things I learned from the 15PM teardown video
1. The adhesive for both front screen & back glass is very gooey/sticky. This basically makes a mess when opening the phones. Black gooey stuff all over the frame & very visible on the natural titanium model.
Not sure if it's just the 2 phones I have or the technique I used to open them. Or it's like this by design.
2. In order to remove the logic board from the housing, you MUST open the back glass first & remove the screw & plate that is holding down the wireless charging/rear flash flex.
So expect to see lots of torn wireless charging/rear flash flex torn. I already see a ton of 12-14 series with torn "5G Flex" that are torn, due to technician not aware there's a soldered flex on the board.
Although, maybe there's a way to lift the board carefully enough out, so you can reach the screw/plate from the front side.
3. The 15PM ALSO has a 5G flex soldered to the board. So those will be ripped, for the above reasons.
4. The overall insides were very similar to the 14PM model. So if you've worked on a 14PM, then 15PM won't be much different.
5. In the US, we have eSIM models only. But where is there room for the international model's SIM Slot? On the 14 series, there was just an empty spot where the sim slot would be located. I couldn't find any spot where an international model would have a physical SIM Slot located at.
So that means, either the international model also is eSIM only OR international model has a totally different internal design (unlikely).
6. The confirmed parts to create a "unknown part" notification have not changed. Battery, Display, Rear Cameras. And of course, Face ID/TrueDepth Camera is still paired.
7. Battery Cycle count is now in the settings > general > about > bottom of the page. It then says "unknown" when you replace the battery.
8. iPhone 15PM does NOT support "Fast Charging" via USB C. It was only charging at 5V/1.13A (5W), when on the same charger, my S22 Ultra was at 9V/3A (27W). Maybe it's due to the battery was around 80%.
I will do more testing to confirm later.
9. iPhone 15PM USB C to another iPhone 15PM USB C does charge the other phone. But it does NOT allow any data transfer.
10. iPhone 15PM USB C to my S22 Ultra, would detect on both phones, that data wanted to transfer, as we got pop ups on both asking access to data. But ultimately, I found no way to access data from either phone.
11. Action button flex is still attached to the volume flex and power button flex. It is also not paired.
12. iPhone 15PM will restart every 3 minutes when the back glass/wireless flex is unplugged. The panic log showed 0x400000. Same as iPhone 14/14P.
13. USB C accessories seem to work. I tried a USB flash drive, USB mouse and USB keyboard.
14. USB C Data Transfer speeds seem slow. Took a "long time" to transfer a 435MB file from iPhone to PC. Unfortunately, the PC didn't show the actual transfer speeds.
I'm sure there are more. But just what I can remember from the livestream.
What did you learn or find the most interesting?
If you have a Seek Thermal Cam, you're missing out if you don't have a VCC Seek Stand: https://www.vccboardrepairs.com/buy-seek-stand
Injured Gadgets just got these back in stock, so get them while you can!
It can take us a while to build these out sometimes, so they're sometimes out of stock for a while, but we're working towards always having inventory ready to build more as they sell out.
This stand makes using a thermal cam so easy. So much better than any other thermal solution on the market.
It allows you to get real close up (using my Macro Lens), and easily find where the short is coming from.
Plus it's hard free, so you can have your hands free to try to boot the device from DCPS, while having an image that is in focus & not moving around.
You can even record a video through the app, while you inject voltage into the short, so you can go back & see exactly which component was it that was heating up.
Save yourself lots of time by getting a Seek Cam, Stand & Macro Lens! ...
Anyone who is doing game console repairs, knows how many screws you need to remove to access the motherboard.
Especially the PS5, with the 5,000 screws or so.
If you don't already have an electric screwdriver, GET ONE ASAP.
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It's rechargeable through micro USB and allows you to easily swap the tips out. You can also fold it to be straight or L shape.
Let me know below if you are already using an electric screwdriver 👇👇
A funny example of why board repair are still very human skills.
Someone posted in my Facebook group asking for help identifying a ripped pad on a PS5 fan connector. The connector had been torn off the board, and they wanted to know what signal the missing middle pad belonged to so they could run a jumper.
A commenter decided to let AI handle it.
They fed the photo into ChatGPT and got back a nice-looking annotated diagram showing all the pin functions. The problem?
It was completely wrong.
The AI labeled the missing pad as the TACH signal when in reality that pad is ground.
The scary part is that if you didn't already know the answer, the diagram looks convincing. It has arrows, labels, colors, callouts, and all the confidence in the world. Yet it still gave bad information that could send someone down the wrong path.
This is one of the reasons I don't lose sleep over AI replacing board repair technicians.
AI is incredibly good at summarizing information that already exists publicly. But in...
Had an interesting iPhone 16 Pro Max data recovery come in and wanted to see if anyone else has experienced this....
The phone came in heavily smashed and completely dead. After troubleshooting, I found a VDD_MAIN short. Once I cleared the short, I was able to get the phone booting again.
My original plan was to connect it to a PC and see if I could get the usual Stolen Device Protection prompt so I could proceed with the recovery. However, the phone wouldn't establish a USB connection.
After troubleshooting further, I eventually discovered the board had a sandwich separation issue, which explained why USB wasn't working.
Before digging into the sandwich repair, I started playing around with Stolen Device Protection just to see what would happen.
I noticed Stolen Device Protection was definitely enabled. Out of curiosity, I tapped "Set Up Alternate Appearance." Normally I'd expect it to immediately reject me since I'm obviously not the owner, but instead it actually looked like it wanted to proceed ...
One of the perks of being an active member is access to our private Facebook Messenger group chat.
We’ve got a solid group of techs in there discussing panic logs, 3 minute restarts, board level repairs, troubleshooting, tools, weird cases, and sharing fixes.
It’s not a training course, just a chill place for techs to help each other out and talk shop.
If you want in, comment your Facebook profile link below or DM me on Facebook and I’ll add you.
