Had an iPhone 11 Pro Max come in for no power. Device was in excellent condition, no cracks, no signs of impact. Customer said it just randomly died.
Honestly, this is one of those classic faults I used to see all the time, and still enjoy because of how straightforward it is once you know what to look for.
First step, as always with no power, was checking current draw on the DC power supply.
Boot behavior:
Current was jumping all over the place. It would bounce from 0 → ~500mA → 0 → a few mA → back up again. Just constantly pulsing with no stable draw.
That kind of behavior usually points to a short on a NAND cap
So I threw it under the thermal cam (Seek Compact Pro). Timing is key here, because you only see heat when current is actually being drawn. When it drops to zero, there’s no heat signature.
Caught it at the right moment and found a hotspot on the board.
Under the microscope, the area showed a slightly darkened cap under the underfill, classic sign.
Ended up being a shorted PP3V0 cap on the NAND rail.
Important note:
This type of short does NOT damage the NAND. It just prevents it from receiving power, so the phone won’t boot.
Fix:
Removed the shorted capacitor.
No replacement needed here. Since this cap has one side to ground on a power rail, the phone runs perfectly fine without it.
Reassembled, tested, and the phone is now fully functional.
I’ve done a ton of these over the years. One thing I still see way too often is newer techs replacing caps unnecessarily. That’s usually a giveaway they don’t have much experience with board-level power rail diagnostics.
Attached photos:
- Thermal cam hotspot (timed during current spike)
- Cap before removal
- After removal
- Device fully working again
Curious how often you guys are seeing NAND rail cap shorts on these?
Also:
- Do you rely more on thermal cam or freeze spray for finding intermittent shorts?
- What’s your go-to method when current is pulsing like this?
- Anyone seeing similar behavior on newer models (13/14/15 series)?
Let’s hear it 👇
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 ...
