Ever wondered what happens when a smartphone takes a severe beating? Well, here's a fascinating tale from the trenches of data recovery!
This Samsung Galaxy S21 came to us in a sorry state – smashed in half, with a part of the motherboard in shambles. For newer smartphones, unlocking and accessing data require booting up the device. But with a broken motherboard, that pathway becomes an encrypted dead end, unless...
Unless you embark on the intricate journey of swapping the essential chips – the CPU and UFS – to a working motherboard. Now, that's no walk in the park. To complicate matters, the S21 and its newer counterparts demand an additional step. Some elusive tiny IC, rumored to be an eeprom or the eSIM chip, needs to tag along for the ride.
The S21 series, known for its sleek design, presents a unique challenge. To accommodate a large battery for extended smartphone life, designers opted for a stacked motherboard configuration – two layers deep. A space-saving brilliance that, for us microsoldering techs, translates to a more complex repair process.
In this particular case, a cracked RAM added a layer of difficulty. Thankfully, the CPU remained unscathed, and the RAM, fortunately, didn't need to be the original for data recovery. After a meticulous dance of swapping the CPU, UFS, installing a new RAM, and delicately splitting the motherboard sandwich, we transplanted the elusive "pin code IC," reballing the sandwich for good measure. The final steps involved booting the phone, unlocking it, and running a Smart Switch Backup to secure every bit of precious data.
Undoubtedly, this level of data recovery is an investment. Still, it's a service we proudly extend to anyone in need of rescuing their valuable data.
If you find yourself in a data recovery dilemma, drop us a message or reach out through our website (link in bio).
For fellow repair shops, we offer discounted B2B pricing to ensure we all stay connected in the world of tech rescues.
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.
🌟 Cordless Screwdriver with T9 Bit: https://amzn.to/3E5duCj
🌟Extended T9 Bit: https://amzn.to/3c4YJac
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 👇👇
Hey guys! I'm so glad to finally get here. Thank you Jesse for the encouragement. Took me a minute but I'm here. I'm so eager to learn and grow. I have some experience with soldering etc, I can treat with obvious issues but there's something about diagnosing issues (especially with iPhones) that I have trouble with. I'm hoping this community can help with that.
Currently I have two iPhone 13 devices that need repair. One is stuck in recovery mode. A flash was attempted but there was an error during the process (Error 4013).
The other 13 does not boot or charge. It pulls 0.02A on the ammeter and I can feel both the back getting really hot. I tried this with two batteries. I also noticed that the wireless charging IC also gets very hot (338S00817) even when using a wired charger.
Remember I'm a noob so please....be gentle. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
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 ...
