During my recent iPhone 12 CPU Swap Video (linked in the comments), I ended with the phone fully booting, but restarting every 3 minutes.
Since I didn't swap the NFC chips, I have to go through the "Swipe to Recover" screen, where it shows a white screen that says "Attempting Data Recovery".
I like to this of this process as it's "reprogramming the new NFC chips" so it can allow the phone to boot & unlock.
This process can take anywhere from 10-45 minutes, depending on how much data is on the phone.
In the video, when we started the "Swipe to Recover" process, I noticed that within 3 min or so, the phone would auto restart. So without the Swipe to Recover process completing, I am unable to access the data.
Due to how long the video was, I decided to end it there & post the fix here.
First thing I tried was a new charging port flex, as that's the most common fault of 3 min restart for iPhone 12, but no change.
I then decided to diode mode the charging port FPC connector, as that's where the sensor from the charing port flex (pressure sensor aka Prs0) would connect to, to reach the next part of the circuit.
And sure enough, I found a line that was OL, when it should have had a reading.
The line was labeled as "Eiger" (PPVAR_EIGER_S2_CONN) and I know I've seen a panic log that mentions Eiger, as being part of the charging port flex.
ZXW showed that there's a filter near the PMIC shield on that line.
Sure enough, the filter was missing. Most likely caused by my iron, when I was applying the low melt solder to the shield, as a way to make the shield removal easier.
I replaced the filter from the original customer's board & boom! The phone stopped rebooting & the data was saved!
It wasn't obvious that the filter was missing, as it was mostly covered in underfill too! So without measuring with my multimeter, I would have never found it.
Also, it's important to diagnose thing systematically. If you think through "what's the most likely cause of this?"
Then drill into that issue & confirm it's not it, then you move onto the next most likely, and so on.
This type of diagnosing, troubleshooting & fault finding skill comes from years of non stop working through these types of cases. We see so many different types of scenarios, that we can easily anticipate what could be happening, as we've probably seen something similar before.
I hope this post helps you see my thought process of how I help solve this case & successfully recover the customer's data.
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 ...
