IamA Jessa Jones of iPad Rehab, Apple iPhone "unauthorized" board repair expert who brought the world's attention to the iPhone 6/6+ design flaw that causes touch ic disease AMA!

How many BGA chip sets do you think under dog has eaten in his lifetime?

Thousands, which is undoubtedly the key to his surprising longevity. Sunday pulled a cumulus chip off my eyelid yesterday. I found a tristar on my steering wheel, but the winner is Christy. She brushed her hair, found a chip she needed, and used it.

Is her hair ESD safe packing material?

Yes, I require all my employees to have ESD safe hair. If it turns out to be a practical problem I guess we will all have to shave our heads. Gotta love your job!

What is this disease you speak of?

Touch disease--a silly name for a serious problem. iPhone 6/6+ phones as they age get slightly twisted internally due to a design flaw and that makes the touchscreen eventually stop working entirely.

wtf this just happened to me! they said they couldn't do anything and to just buy a new one /:

They, meaning Apple, can't fix this--they do design and manufacture, not rework and repair.

That doesn't mean that it can't be fixed. I fix these phones all day every day and have fixed a few since I've been sitting here answering questions. There are lots of great microsolderers out there that can fix this problem.

The problem is that Apple wants to control all aspects of their products lifecycle and insists that all fuckups go in the trash. They'd sooner take a bite out of the good side of that Apple than admit that unauthorized hacks like us can clean the skid marks out of their dirty underwear here.

Every "unauthorized" (a word I loathe using for this) repair center in existence is treated like this. I get that these companies only duty is to their shareholders, and getting you to buy new products does that, but as evidenced by yours, and many others successes, customers clearly want to lower the cost of ownership.

There is an unstated symbiosis. They need us to keep people happy with their product for longer, without them having to actually do real repair. Neither Apple nor the consumer really want to throw away a perfectly good 13 month old phone because the headphone jack is wonky. But repair sucks. If you open the phone to replace the $5 headphone jack you are on the hook when the wifi stop getting signal a month later--but it was fine until you touched it! So they tolerate us and pretend not to notice. But only so much. We can't have people fixing 3 year old phones now can we? Those are lost sales.

Fuckkkkkkk. How can I prevent this?

Don't buy an iPhone 6/6+.

pretty much

I have found the most rewarding new experiences & business ideas to have been the ones I shared with an inner circle of people with whom I am already connected through other relationships.

Your bio paints an immensely enviable picture of a proud mother of 4, a married family mom. How has your journey through learning & revolutionizing component level board repair, whilst learning the ropes of entrepreneurial business, balanced out with familial obligations?

Work life balance? About the same as yours dear friend.

What hours do you usually keep at work? Or if it's inconsistent or goes through phases, describe the variation as best you can (assuming it's not pseudo-random).

Well it is 1:30am Eastern and I'm at the shop working, and one of my mommytechs is still here as well. I got here today around 2pm and will probably leave at 6am. I regularly work 12-18 hours a day like a maniac, and then will crash for a day. I try to also fit in days spent just being a mom. Growing businesses are like that---a year ago the iPad Rehab enterprise was still run by moms out of my dining room. Today we are in a corner shop with over 50k in microsoldering equipment, 5 local mommytechs plus my right hand man Mark Shaffer in Florida who works full time for iPad Rehab.

That's amazing. That is a very similar schedule to the one I tended to naturally gravitate towards when I was interning in California during my college years. Now I'm in a fairly strict 9-5 job (with an hour or two lenience either way, but beyond that people start to ask questions). I long for the days when I could arrive at 2pm and hammer away on a problem until I couldn't see straight anymore.

I think I have a similar outlook on what work schedules should be, except I work in software instead of hardware. Same idea though; set a goal then keep working at that goal and don't give up until you either get it done, or hate yourself and need to sleep off the failure. :D

P.S. - I asked this question resulting from watching your entire 12 hour repair video.

Yes, it is the gift and curse of hyperfocus that makes you well suited for this kind of problem solving. My grad school days were the same way, I rarely started the day before 4pm because you know, the parking garage rates go way down after 4. I wrote my PhD thesis largely in one sitting. One extraordinarily long sitting that involved me, a chair, and a computer and I watched everyone come and go, and come, and go, and 48 hours later I was done.

The sad thing is that the last time I was awake and working all night and then staying up all the next day was.......oh man, yesterday. It was yesterday. I had to stay here working all night to make sure I caught the landlord when he tried to squeeze through a little hole in the wall without permission. Catching him was worth it though.

Underdog is my black pug dog. In a stunning triumph of ignorance he has managed to become the last dog standing of three pug dogs we've had. I was sure the tiny wheezing puppy that could fit in my hand in 2008 wouldn't survive the first night, but here he is, shitting on my carpet 8 years later.

Ah, an '08. You missed the recall by a year.
 
http://www.theonion.com/article/dog-breeders-issue-massive-recall-of-07-pugs-2206

It figures. I don't think they solved the problem with the '08 model either.

Hello dear Jessa, congrats at your team and yourpersonality, i post a question about hot air station, you and Luis used this 2 machine, weller and jvc but it's very expensive. do you know other ways? i have heard a lot of people use the station AOYUE Int 2703A+, what do you think about this? another little question: i need to change my microscope and in your tech store you use a sm-4tp, i have see on amscope website the sm-4tz (3.5X-90X) it's better than 45X? https://www.amazon.com/AmScope-SM-4TZ-144A-Professional-Trinocular-Magnification/dp/B004UBNIMC/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1472747068&sr=8-1&keywords=SM-4TZ

Louis and I both use and love the JBC JT-A hot air station. It's an $1800 investment and it's a sleek black machine with precision temperature control. The JBC makes easy work of tough jobs like de soldering the tough iPhone 6 bottom shield, and has excellent heat focus--you can change plastic fpc connectors easily just using hot air without melting surrounding plastic. I wish I'd never tried it because before the JBC I was using an old Hakko 801 station professionally with a $400 price tag...but you know what they say, once you go black you never go back :) You can't expect an $80 AOYUE station to perform like an $1800 station. The affordable alternative is the Hakko 810, weller wha900 or any good brand older standalone machine. For microscopes you should look for any that have simul focal feature--so you can output to trip ocular port for teaching others without sacrificing binocular vision in the scope.

Hi Jessa, I'm a big fan of your channel. I've got a Amscope microscope that i use for micro-soldering. When I use my Amscope I seem to have to have it a lot closer to the motherboard than you do in your videos. If I raise the whole thing it goes out of focus, should I change my eyepiece lense (WF10X/20) or the main lense (2X WD30)?

she replied here https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/50qs63/iama_jessa_jones_of_ipad_rehab_apple_iphone/d76kn5n

Thanks--TIL, Reddit phone App sucks.

Has apple threatened you like they did that Louis guy (think that's his name)? If not do u think they will since you helped expose them with their pants down in this touch ic issue? I commend you by the way to be at the forefront of this when u could have easily sat back quietly and kept collecting $$$ for all the touch ic jobs I'm sure u get

They called me once to have a friendly chat about how to not get banned from the Apple Support Community Forums. I got banned anyway. Twice.

Two questions, why did you use your front lawn for sledgehammering your toilet, instead of the back?

And what other services does your shop offer? Are you guys exclusively handheld repair, or even just microsoldering?

The front door was closest, I'm not carrying a toilet down the deck steps! Besides, it was pretty under the flowering tree for my kids to sit on it and take pictures....because if you're sledgehammering a toilet in the front yard you're going to take pictures.

We fix anything with a circuitboard that makes sense to repair. We see a lot of drones, and other weird stuff. BMW tailight with bad LEDs, the dentists loupe lamp, some medical equipment, vape shop guys stuff, vintage curling irons.... Stuff you fix with a multimeter and a soldering iron, as long as the value of the device supports the repair.

So are said pictures online somewhere?

I think there's one in the Microsoldering Mom blog post from iFixit http://ifixit.org/blog/6911/micro-soldering-mom/

As a consumer who has spent thousands on full retail phones (unlimited data on Verizon; can't use subsidized upgrades) since smartphones were a thing back in the early 2000s, I can say I've been reasonably lucky when it comes to not getting models that were defective out of the box -- at least, not to the extent of the Touch IC disease, which is very prevalent, hard to prevent without microsoldering, and isn't being acknowledged by the manufacturer.

I've used Windows Mobile (before it was Windows Phone), Android for several years straight, but my most recent phone is an iPhone 6S Plus. I absolutely love the 6S+, as it's been dropped and splashed with water a number of times and it still looks and functions exactly like a brand new factory phone.

But I'm very easily swayed by tempting delicious new features, and even more swayed by threats of obsolescence, declining performance and battery life, and eventually, the manufacturer ceasing the flow of security updates (the most important thing IMO).

Aside from just buying a phone and hoping for the best, do you have any recommendations for how best to pick phones that are a good compromise between currentness (having all the latest gee-whiz features and current-gen specs) and risk aversion to potential major problems like Touch IC disease?

For example, what if I buy the iPhone 7 Plus when it comes out this month, and it turns out to have some kind of similar horrible flaw that Apple won't fix? I'd be missing my 6S Plus, for sure! Is there some kind of a compromise to minimize that risk without buying older tech that's been proven solid through the test of time? Or is an enthusiast like me just taking on a lot of risk that we'll be buying what is basically a broken device and have no recourse to get it fixed by the manufacturer?

As far as Apple phones go I think the idea of waiting to buy the "s" version might help. The S versions get new features but don't have the major overhaul that the number versions get---so "lessons learned" on the number version turn into adjustments to the design on the S versions to solve problems.

For example--touch disease. I don't think Apple had any way to predict the long term consequence of putting the touch ics with no underfill on a big phone with no metal shield, and I think they certainly underestimated the 'bendiness' of the phone in normal use. Once the defect declared itself, they remedied it on the 6s by moving the touch ics to the screen itself. The 5 gets 'pry damage' because an important chip is directly under the sexy little battery pull tab gets cranked off the board when someone jacks the battery out with a knife against the board. The 5s has battery adhesive pull tabs (like command strips) and the important chip is moved, the SIM tray slid back so that no harm can come from prying the battery there.

I definitely don't believe in planned obsolescence--each phone solves the problems of the ones before it, but creates new ones as well. I saw the board for the 7 for the first time today and I can tell that a key cap that accounts for 50% of no power iPhone 6's after water has now been fully covered in silicone so that problem will disappear.

The SE is the 5s reinvented, and has a minor improvement that shows the iterative development going on at Apple. The 5s had no silicone or foam waterproofing. The 6 has silicone but no foam. The 6s has silicone and foam but the foam is glued to the silicone and difficult to replace. The SE has silicone and foam--but the foam is now on top of the original 5s sticker that covers the connector area components--so now it is easy to remove and replace.

You can never know in advance--each phone solves earlier problems but creates new ones. Sticking with the S series phones might be the only way to improve your odds that the phone you pick solves more problems than it creates!

I disagree... Apple routinely repeats their mistakes in their devices. "Hey guys, we know we're having problems with BGA soldering... So let's keep doing it this way!"

You can't make a phone that has as much function as a modern iPhone without bga chips. Even the iPhone 1 has bga chips. The board real estate of bga is tiny, and the function in that space is enormous.

Right, but the point is they can't manage to do it right. They should have went back to the drawing board, figured out what was causing their problems, and fixed that. Part of the issue is the lead free solder. You can't avoid using it so you can sell to a lot of different markets, but that doesn't mean your process of using it has to be consistently terrible for an extended amount of time.

I agree that the handling of the problem has been appalling, especially given their former reputation of being quick to swap bad phones. But I don't think the design was ill conceived at design time.

The 5s has the same touch ics and they are not under filled and work fine. The adjacent audio ic and power management ic are not under filled on the 6/6+ and don't fail either. So I don't fault them for not predicting that the touch ics that they've been using for every model would be prone to failure in the 6/6+.

It was the first thin flat phone and it turned out to be bendier than they thought it would be. Nobody wants to put out a new phone that crumples like an accordion on purpose, so my guess is that whatever stress testing they used at design just didn't mimic real life use well enough.

On the next phone, the 6s, they moved the touch ics off the board entirely and put them on the screen--so not subjected to the same forces as a board screwed down into a bendy frame. Also the 6s has a shit ton of underfill on the PMIC now. So to me it looks like they do try to improve. They'd do better if they weren't required to pump out a new phone every September. If they had done more testing it would have been a better phone.

But the handling of the problem sucks. If you are going to put out a phone too early before you had a chance to uncover design flaws and correct the design, then you are responsible for problems from that decision down the road--even if you corrected the problems in the next model.

The fact that they did NOTHING and even now don't acknowledge the problem is a big F you to consumers.

What's your favorite iPhone model?

iPhone 5s. It is a sturdy dude and fits in a pocket. It has some clear advantages over the 4s, and parts are not expensive. It is not finicky with all the security required for Apple Pay--which then makes the phone very prissy when water damage happens. It doesn't bend and is a great little phone. It has all the advantages of the well-built older iPhones while also having some of the newer features and still will run the software okay.

I might have picked the iPhone SE, except that I have the first one I've ever seen right here on my bench with a charging failure, never been opened. It's too young for tristar disease, so that worries me.

What's the best way to learn about liquid damage repair. I get many phones where vcc is short. What is the best check list to go through (if any). I see them a lot and I am always hesitant to touch them because I don't want to make a phone unrepairable. Zwxtool necessary? Any alternative if necessary?

The hardest thing about water damage is "getting on the right page of the problem" Is it a short or open? What line? Is this a hardware defect or software corruption?

Once you get it narrowed down to the point that you can 'search every house' then it is much simpler. If you know that you have a vcc_main short, then that is great news! You can start searching every component on vccmain and find the culprit. Zxwtool is a great help for making that job quick.

Hey Jessa, I sent my iPhone 6+ in for touch IC work at your shop and when it came back there is a vertical column near the left edge that isn't registering any input.

I swapped another screen in and the same issue persisted. Is it likely a bad connection on one of the IC chips or something else?

I've talked to Sunday about sending the phone in for warranty work but I just wanted to see if there's anything I can do before going without my phone for several days. Thank you very much!

It is impossible to say without seeing it. The fpc connectors themselves rarely fail although that can cause a dead line of touch. More likely this is an example of the underlying defect--a ball from the meson chip is no longer making good contact with the pad. It is possible during placement of the new chip that you can get a 'head on pillow" effect where the solder ball doesn't fully meld with the pad below during installation and is just sitting on top. The normal flexion during use of a 6+ can cause that connection to lift. This is why we offer a relatively long 6 month warranty period for touch solution--just to make sure that if something like that is going on that it will declare itself while the phone is still under our warranty.

I've just purchase zxw tools and I now have my hakko 951-fm working with a shitty auyoe hot air station but it will do, what's the best way to learn how to diagnose these board level issues, for example how can you tell if on the iPhone 6 if the U1401 needs to be replaced or if its really a U1202 that's causing it or if it's something else?

Read forums, ask questions on forums, read the schematics, make hypotheses and test them.

Learn to use a multimeter and compare a bad board to a good board for reading of resistance and voltages. Learn to understand the difference between power and data on the board.

My advice is to start fixing one problem at a time and gradually building an experience base.

Or you could come to iPad Rehab Practical Board Repair School and learn all that in 5 days. :)

My working distance is about four inches and I like being that close to the work. Lots of people can't stand it so close and would rather sacrifice some of the light and use a 0.5x Barlow lens which will double the working distance. Combine that with 20x wide field eyepieces.

Thank you for your reply but when desoldering a chip from motherboard i cant fit the hot air gun under the microscope.

Neither can I, but I do use an angled hot air nozzle

Hi! I read the "about" page on your website, but even though I can understand the similarities between geneticist and device repairwoman, how did you learn the skills you have? Are you self-taught? I'm inspired! Edit: Also, I'm so glad I didn't buy an iPhone 6, but I am expecting my new iPhone SE in the mail tomorrow. Do you think this will be a problem with the SE, or not, since it's much smaller? THANKS!

I have an SE open in front of me right now--looks like a great phone. Time will tell.

I learned how to fix boards by asking the internet. I firmly believe the internet can teach you anything, and the world is very small! I have never taken any formal coursework in electronics, but man I can read a forum! :)

The common thread among all the best microsolderers is extreme analytical thinking and problem solving. Learning to troubleshoot is half of the puzzle. Solve problem by problem by probing, measuring, and comparing and you eventually build an experience base so that diagnosis of signature problems becomes physician-like.

Technical proficiency at board repair is something you have to just do a lot on good equipment, but anyone can do it. Most of my mommytechs had never seen the inside of an iPhone a year ago, but today they are doing repairs every day that shops from all over the world send to us.

Just work on one phone, one problem and know that you will destroy many before you will fix one, but eventually it will come.

How did it feel about spending two years promoting company X as a real contender in professional space only to have them publicly argue the merits of selling rice in a bag as a solution to liquid damaged smartphones? Would you consider promoting another company as hard again considering close association with your personal brand and reputation?

I believe in people. I love iFixit and I am glad to see that after we had a few rounds of academic debate on the subject that they took that listing down. I get where they are coming from--just victims of a logical fallacy. My phone fell in a swimming pool, I put it in a thirsty bag, phone works, thirsty bag saved it.

I have to admit that when I did that water damage video that even I was surprised at how much effort it took for me to actually get a phone in water to get any water damage at all. My understanding of the rice myth increased---the rice phones were never wet, which is why so many of them work. Before, I would have said that although rice was ineffective the reason phones work with no treatment is sheerly luck. I assumed that all wet phones had some corrosion somewhere on the board, and that any phone that was submerged for 5 minutes would have a wet board. I was wrong about that, so I learned something.

What I like about iFixit is their ability to say "We fucked up" and their willingness to listen with an open-mind and make changes. So many organizations just get defensive and intolerant.

When you know better, you do better. iFixit is willing to live that motto, and I still love them even though I will have to turn Eric Essen over my knee and give him a spanking the next time I see him.

What is your most satisfying iPhone data recovery job to date?

I have said "This is my favorite recovery ever!" so many times. What sticks out recently is recovering data from an iPhone that was in a plane crash, then went down with the plane 2 miles underwater to the bottom of the ocean, then sat there for four months, then went to some other data recovery place and failed, then came to me and I recovered it in one day. That one was pretty cool.

A lot of the phones I get are the lost baby pictures, wedding/honeymoon pictures, and dead relative pictures---all of them are really a high to see them come back alive.

Wait wait wait.

Was this a fatal plane crash, or oops, the plane crashed, my phone fell out of my pocket, but we all survived...?

What kind of plane crash isn't fatal? Is that even possible? No, everyone died.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents on most of the crashes listed in the statistics section, in between/ around 10-20 people died

Not everyone dies I guess

Aviation accidents as described there include "we ran over a stray cat, heading back to the gate"

It was a plane crash. As in one minute a mile in the sky, and 10 minutes later 2 miles under the sea. Nobody survives that!

Wow, congratulations on repairing that phone. That must have been really emotional for the survivors of the person who died. And yeah, when a plane crashes into the water, the forces involved are instantly lethal. At least they didn't suffer, and their relatives now have something of theirs to cherish.

It was pretty awesome--mostly because this was a job where I got to hand over the data in person, amidst the tears and hugs. Most of my data recoveries are mail-in jobs.

We watched the videos on the phone together here in the shop projected on the big screen. Sweet family moments that I know they'll treasure. It was so long after the crash that it was really a gift to give someone the ability to hear the voice again of their special person in the videos. Definitely one of the best recoveries.

99% is better than 70%. 70% is better than Jack Daniels, Jack Daniels is better than water, water is better than rice. Rice is better....nope. Rice is not better than nothing.

After bringing the whole touch disease to light, how outraged are you that Apple has edited posts made by yourself and other repair techs on their boards?

Do you feel that is it censorship, or just Apple watching their backs?

If you were ever called to testify on behalf of the class action lawsuit that is coming against Apple for the touch disease issue, would you?

One slightly techie question: I have an iPhone 6 that was in a Ballistic HC case from day 1. I got the case before I even got the phone. I gave the phone to my dad a month or so ago, and he has it in an Otterbox Defender case.

From what I believe, the phone has no torque/bending damage at all. Do you think, in your personal opinion, that we are safe from the Touch Disease? The phone is also a refurbished replacement from Apple after the prior one started blue screening.

Out of order---You are not safe from touch disease in the Otterbox. Not all phones will get it, but the word "refurbished from Apple" is a big red flag. That board most likely had another life curved to someone else's ass before they dropped it and turned it in to Apple because it was too far gone to get a straight up screen swap.

Censorship--Yes, 100%. The forum is hounded by a set of outrageous forum assholes. These people believe that Apple can do no wrong as if it were a commandment. They are not Apple employees, but Apple does nothing to discourage their behavior. They belittle consumers every single day, and will follow my forum posts and flag them so that the Apple hosts delete them. During times when I was banned from the forum, these guys would publicly defame me and my business and I had absolutely no recourse. I remember remarking to my family that never in my adult life have I felt as bullied as I have spending time on the Apple Support Community Forums.

The Apple employee hosts themselves will instantly remove or edit anything that I say that implies knowledge of how the iPhone logic board works. It is almost a game, but yes censorship 100% because they allow posts from others that they delete if they come from me.

Re: Class action--I'm not sure how I feel about this. The attorneys contacted me long ago and I have yet to respond for the touch stuff. When they called for error 53 I immediately said yes, but for touch stuff it is a little bit more gray for me.

I have heard the touch problems are related to something called the "coil" going bad. Any truth to that?

Yes, it's always the coil.

What is the best way to explain to my customers why rice is bad in a nutshell like 2-3 sentences? I understand why but i need it to really sink in with them.

I just made a video on this today that might help, but of course it is way too long like they all are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU5T0GOmfvE

Here's the deal with the rice myth. Wet phones come in two flavors--A) ones where the phone got totally wet, but the logic board did not experience water. These phones need no treatment at all.

Or B) phones that did get a wet logic board---in which case corrosion is instantaneous and the board essentially has salt all over it.

Without opening the phone, you don't know which flavor you have. If you have A--then rice appears to "save" your phone. But it didn't do anything but generate another rice fan. If you have B--then rice prevented you from treating your board in the window of time that the damage was minor, and now you have a dried out salt-caked board. You hook it up to a charger which pumps electricity through a damaged salt-caked board---that is what renders repairable phones unrepairable.

For customers, just blow up a picture of common water damage rice phones and at the top say "Phone in Rice" make a caption "Should we put electricity through this?" They get it.

With all these tech blogs talking about touch ic issue. Do you smell a recall on it soon?

I have absolutely no idea what will happen. I'm stunned by the deafening silence out of Apple on this issue. Surely they know exactly what is going on and have done far more comprehensive failure analyses than I ever could on the problem. They would have started seeing this problem a year ahead of us since we aren't going to see any phones that are under the 1 year normal warranty. I would guess that they became aware of touch disease as a 'big deal' kind of problem a few months after launch in 2014. If they didn't, they should have. I'm surprised that they didn't see this avalanche coming and make some preparation--put a mod shield on the board themselves for example, or hire a company to replace the touch ics on the warranty boards---but they didn't. They are either intentionally screwing people or are just too big to organize internal communication and appear to have likely been doling out mildy bent/dropped boards taken in as swaps back into new housings as refurbs--which is consistent with why there are so many reports of 6+ refurbs having the exact same grey flickering bars when taken out of the box.

I can't imagine how it would make business sense to knowingly engage in this practice---clearly it would be (and is) a PR nightmare for customers to pay for a $329 out of warranty refurb and then have it fail the same way again. I find it hard to believe that they would be unaware of the risk of reusing 'set up' boards, but also mind-boggling that they would take that risk. Given that, I have no idea what they are thinking for their next move.

If I was driving the bus, I would have voluntarily said a long time ago "We tried our best but we fucked up, our flagship phone should last more than a year, so we are giving everyone free AppleCare+ to extend the warranty to 2 years" and I would have swapped them for 6s+ and then hired a company to refurb the 6+ boards so that touch disease was cured.

I have found myself very inspired by the Youtube and entrepreneurial success of both you and Louis. I've been wondering if I could do something along the same lines -- fixing problems for people and putting some of the highlights on Youtube -- and somehow make money, while focusing on software.

Do you think the idea of your business model (youtube + brick and mortar store with a small staff) is applicable to areas outside electronics hardware -- say, fixing peoples' broken Windows Update over Teamviewer; diagnosing a failed Windows 10 upgrade; distinguishing between hardware damage and software issues; and similar such software problems? Note, I'm not talking about your standard "computer shop" that will reformat the HDD and put a fresh copy of Windows on it if there's software issues, and replace any components that have anything wrong with them. I'm talking about repairing problems with an operating system or a software application in order to restore it to correct operation, without having to re-image the machine.

I've mostly done this type of stuff for people for free, in the past, and 99% of the time I'm able to resolve the problem remotely, even if it takes me a long time. I'm a coder, but I think my natural disposition is more geared towards diagnosis and troubleshooting. It's what I want to do, but I need to find a way to market to people that will get them to come to me instead of Geek Squad.

...Or maybe I'm just being needlessly greedy to think that I should ask for money for this? I've answered hundreds of questions on sites like superuser.com to the point that I wonder if people even place any value on the resolution of software problems. I feel like most people would just shrug, copy off their irreplaceable photos onto a flash drive, and reinstall. :/ I've been running the same copy of Windows since 2012, and it still runs as well as it did the day I installed it due to careful maintenance and intelligent problem-solving. Go figure...

(Aside: I don't really have the hardware tinkering "gene"; too afraid of breaking things, solder fumes, etc. The most I've done is swap RAM and SSDs in laptops, and build my own custom desktops. Never picked up a soldering iron. It's definitely not for everyone!)

I think this is a bad idea. Here's why.

Louis and I stay solvent because we are both regularly charging people $200-400 for most of what we do. (He fixing motherboard worth $700, and I doing data recovery.)

What I took from your question is... I fix software problems and it takes a long time. If the value of the software is about $100, the most anyone would reasonably pay is $50 to fix, which sounds like a great way to make no money. Finding people willing to allow you to TeamViewer into their computer and suspend their suspicions that you are actually installing viruses that you will then charge to remove---that's a tough sell.

Some people will pay to fix hardware even when it doesn't make sense for them out of a sense of duty to the environment. But software? That's just ones and zeros. Erase that shit and move on.

But there are people out there who can't stand a problem they can't solve. You might find a market of people willing to pay for the instruction of the solution. I paid a guy $10 on JustAnswers to tell me if I was on the right track to fix my hot tub sensor error by replacing some flow valve. When I first started learning board repair I paid Filip Pusca $30/mo for the right to ask him stupid noob questions and I thought it was great.

Filip started his paid forum after he got tired of being the go to guy on GSM forum for free. Louis started his macbook board repair forum after he got tired of being the go to guy on advancedreworks for free. If you are the goto guy on superuser, then offering tutoring or paid Q&A might fly to get paid for what you are already doing for free----but as far as retail customers paying for software repair, probably not worth pursuing.

Lisa Grant at mobile lizard cell phone repair knows what's up in Baltimore. I doubt she's doing touch ics, but if my phone was wet in Baltimore I'd go to her for a trip through ultrasonic.

Can you name your top 3 favorite phone companies?

As in cell phone carriers? I don't really have any favorites, they all seem the same. I would pick MVNOs over the big four---business phone is on PagePlus which is great, and I have no experience with the rest of the MVNOs

Oh sorry I meant phone brands such as HTC, Apple, Sony etc.

I think High Technology Crap is really tough to repair, as is Motorola.

My favorite phone brands are Samsung, Nexus, and Apple--they do a lot of annoying shit, but I have kids and have to say that the pioneer that designed a toy that can captivate a 2 year old and a 92 year old will always deserve a spot on the shortlist.

I would say that analogy you came up with definitely deserves a shout-out.

Edit: I also wanted to know the most budget friendly and effective way to replace a Samsung S6 screen.

I read somewhere that S5 screens could be used as well.

I don't do much screws and glues general repair, but the cost effective way to get Samsung screens is to go to someone that can domestically refurbish your cracked LCD

How do you deal with stripped screws? Those are literally the bane of my existance

You don't get stripped screws if you use WiHa drivers, I can't think of the last time I had a stripped screw. If I did have one, I'd use the red handled CHP 170 cutters to get that sucker to turn one way or another. Other folks etch a line with a dremel and then use a flathead.

Do you have any JIS style drivers? I had an iphone 5 (maybe can't recall) with some screws that none of my WiHa bits were able to get a bite on. I'm convinced the screws were JIS (which looks like phillips but is slightly different; very common in Japanese electronics/cameras).

I have a set of micro JIS drivers now and I barely ever use my WiHa bits anymore - JIS drivers seem to work better than phillips on both phillips and JIS screws. The best JIS drivers I have found (that I can afford at least) are made by Moody Tools. The metal they use is not as good as Wiha's, but Wiha doesn't manufacture JIS bits.

Love your youtube channel.

I use a moody pentalobe driver everday---mostly because it's green handle lets me know it's not wiha. I don't put much thought into screwdrivers, we generally use three---pentalobe, wiha 000, and the special standoff screwdriver from China---Jason sells these on microsoldering supply. Once you use that you will never be able to go without it. There's something sexy about a driver that perfectly fits a screw.

What was the worst customer you've ever had?

We rarely get negative reviews, but any of the handful we have would qualify as worst customer. The guy who sent us a phone from Japan that turned out to just need a new battery without providing any contact info. Phone sits on shelf for four months after invoicing and we have no way to contact him since his quote request contact info was wrong. He pops up to give us a 1-star review, still without leaving us any way to contact him.

Another guy sent us an iPad mini backlight job. We fix it and send it back board in back housing. He botches the screen install and sends it for a warranty look asking us to "fix it correctly this time" On arrival he has blown the backlight again, knocked off components near the battery connector and somehow managed to rip the battery connector itself leaving half of the male end of the battery connector mashed into the female fpc. We fix that for him and creatively repair his native battery by soldering a new male connector from an iPhone 5 battery which matches the iPad mini. He gets it back and still can't get his screen replacement done and claims that it wont boot at all. Third time back it has nothing wrong with the board at all, and boots and charges normally. This time he sends it with the absolute crappiest screen that $10 can buy, and he has creased the digitizer flex so it is never going to work and the home button has no adhesive at all. I show him a detailed guide on how to source a good mini digitizer part and how to tape the part to avoid ghosting and how to install it without fucking it up. We charge up the mini to 100% and write a pep talk into his ticket reply.

He gets it back and blames us for the part not working and leaves a 1-star review.

And of course there was the mini that came in that had been set on fire and the note said "I think I burned the backlight fuse, and maybe you could check the digitizer connector" The whole bottom half of the mini had literally been in flames at one point.

Before repairing phones what did you do?

I trained with my beloved mentor Scott Kern in molecular genetics of pancreatic cancer at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. After my PhD I taught the big freshman general biology course at RIT in Rochester, NY and ran a small research lab to teach students how to think about science. Then I was a stay at home mom after accidentally doubling the number of children I had. When they started breaking iDevices, I started fixing them as "MommyFixit" which grew into iPad Rehab.

My iPhone has this touch disease (6+) how can I fix it?

You can go to Apple and pay them $329 and walk out with a refurbished iPhone 6+ that may be affected by the same failure in the future.

Or you can throw it in a box and wait for Apple to potentially say "we fucked up, everyone come pick up your brand new 6s!" And if you do the 'go to Apple route' in theory they could reimburse you if they designed a quality program to be retroactive.

Or you can send it out to some microsolderer like me who will replace the touch ics and add a metal shield mod to the back of the board to reduce the chance of this happening again in the future.

Last question. From what I understand touch ic stops working because the solder balls break off , thus losing connection with the board. I saw video with your modded plate soldered on to keep it from reoccurring. If it helps that much why not just reflow the touch ic that's on there already and then putting the plate on instead of also replacing the touch ic? Just genuinely curious. I'm assuming that's not good enough and that there's more to it .

We tried just putting a metal shield mod on without changing the touch ics for intermittent no touch. Didn't work.

We think that once you have any cracked balls, that oxidation happens at the surface of the ball/pad joint. Solder hates oxidation and won't flow. You can mitigate this to some degree with flux, but you really can't get flux to flow all the way under the chip very well.

We haven't bothered with reflow+shield just because it is more work to disassemble the board from the housing than it is to actually change the touch ics, that's the easy part! If you're heating the board and nudging the chip you might as well just pull it and replace it to be sure you don't have any oxidation issues.

iPhone 6s replaced the u2 chip but now it stays in the apple logo what did I do wrong?

What was it doing before? What made you replace the tristar chip in such a young phone?

Do you still do board repair school? If so, any plans on bringing it to L.A.?

We do the course once a month for 5 days here in Rochester. Since we moved into a permanent location last December, the course is a lot less mobile than when Louis and I were doing it out of a hotel. I can't imagine packing all this shit up like we used to do.

My queue is also a lot more overwhelming than a year ago, so course week is an exhausting but fun hell week every month with Mark. We teach all day, then come back and work the queue as normal all night. By Thursday we get pretty ridiculous from the sleep deprivation---last time we were taking bets on which capacitor would be short in an iPhone 6 backlight job with the loser having to eat an FL11 gas gauge filter. And doing the electric slide. Yup, vague memories of doing the electric slide here in the shop at 3am during course week.

You surely get tons of "data recovery for the sake of the data" (not the phone) repairs. Why do you think it is that so many people have zero backups of the irreplaceable data on their iPhones? iCloud makes it totally seamless and automatic, and there are other services available from other cloud providers if you don't trust Apple with your baby pictures. Or you could just plug it into your computer every day religiously and hit "Sync" in iTunes. I don't get it.

Do people ever explain to you why they don't have any backups of the content? Do you even ask? Or do you just know the reason off the top of your head? I ask this because everyone in my circle of friends and family -- technical or not -- has the common sense to backup what's on their phone. It's crazy to hear of all these data recovery jobs; nobody I know would ever need one.

Messy desk or clean desk? I'm pegging you as clean desk.

I think it is a personality trait. Some people are rule followers, some are rebels, some always on time, some always late. Some love math,. some love art.

Data recovery comes in a couple of flavors: Messy desk types that were aware of backup but never got around to it.
Important event that just happened then phone died. New baby exhaustion--iPhone hasnt been backed up in 10 weeks because mom doesn't sleep at night and it is never plugged in and connected to wifi. What do you mean it's not backed up, I thought... people who made some mistake setting up their backup system.

PS: My personal phone hasn't been backed up for about a month. And I intentionally submerged it in water last night for a YouTube video on the rice myth. And only now does it occur to me that that was pretty dumb. :) Good thing I know how to fix water damaged phones!

Both my work and home desks are extremely messy. :)

But my software existence is as orderly as a library at Princeton. It's an ivory tower; nay, a Mecca to well-maintained and curated configuration. My downloads folder is a little messy, but my software installs are well-kept, updated and not bloated. :)

And on my iPhone I have it connected to iCloud for around 18 hours a day (over WiFi) to sync and backup automatically.

Actually got burned by an unintentional data loss a few years ago. My mom had started writing a book on her computer, when an Ubuntu update borked it hard. I spent hours trying to fix it, then gave up and reimaged it to Windows without realizing she had the book on there (she didn't tell me). Tried all sorts of HDD data recovery programs and eventually gave up and told her she lost her book. She says she only had around 10 pages written, but I felt SO guilty (she wasn't even mad, which makes it even worse).

Ever since then, I've kept Crashplan on her PC and told her to use Google's web apps (Docs/Sheets) if she ever gets the creative urge again. Still, after all these years, she hasn't resumed working on the book. I can't help but feel like I unintentionally crushed her dream of writing a book and she can't get back into the groove of it again.

Guilt is a powerful motivator to turn someone into an obsessive backup freak. I use Amazon Glacier, Crashplan, and iCloud. You could torch all my family's possessions, and we wouldn't lose a byte of valuable data. (Don't actually test that theory though, please; we love our possessions!)

Well there you go u/allquixotic --sounds like you would have had a customer here a few years ago.

I forgot the other common data job---lost notes for a book! One guy even came from Germany to take our Practical Board Repair course for this. He was doing general phone repair and of course had his own data backed up---including the notes for his book. Then he took a customer who needed to transfer her data from phone A to phone B and he was out of space on his laptop. So he....deleted his backup to make room. Then went into the bathroom and dropped his phone in the toilet.

He sent it to some data place in Europe and they quoted him $7k which is what people say when they really mean "Uh, we really really really don't want you to take us up on this" So he decided to come to the course. We used it as an example and he ended up doing the hardware repair to recover the data himself. That was a great smile when he got that back.

Bought a cheap charger for the car when plugged the phone the phone didn't charge anymore. I replaced the charge port but nothing. I changed the battery to a fully charged one and the phone turned on fine everything work find but don't charge. Didn't recognize a usb and could not connect to iTunes?

Cheap car chargers are like letting your phone eat at McDonalds and smoke cigarettes. They are cheap, convenient, and everywhere, but you know that eventually they will kill the phone. The reason is that unlike certified chargers they have no overvoltage protection built into the cable. They send noisy ripple voltage to the phone and allow surges to pass into the phone. The Tristar (formerly called U2) chip that is on the receiving end of this is a prissy chip that is easily damaged. The symptoms of bad Tristar can be really broad, but classicly--not charging, fake charging, rapid battery drain, not booting, "accessory not supported" message even after switching back to original cable, inability to charge a stone dead battery, and autoboot on battery connect, Any of these can be dead Tristar. Your phone is a textbook Tristar failure. Sending it out for Tristar chip replacement is the only solution.

My front display (glass is coming off) from my iPhone 5. How may I fix this myself?

Order a quality display assembly and follow a guide on iFixit. Very doable DIY job. eBay/Amazon parts tend to be crappy. Injured gadgets and iFixit have better parts

My father just got an iphone 6. I was thinking of getting him a Otterbox Defender against dropping. Maybe a thick phone case will also protect against bending and the touch-chip malfunction? What do you guys think?

Maybe, although some phones fail anyway even if babied. Touch disease is mostly a problem in iPhone 6+, so you should be fine on the 6--statistically

\o/

Jesus Christ I'm too old for reddit. What does that mean, Rudolph? Playing soccer? Someone has a ball stuck in their vagina? Oh. Happy arms in the air. Got it.

How do you feel about an iPhone 6+ to Samsung Note 7 switch ?

Choose your poison--catch on fire or not have touch :)

If Apple makes all their future phones IP68 water resistant out of the box, would that hurt the volume/ingress of your business badly enough that you'd have to change business model, find new profit centers, or move to a less-expensive physical location?

Assume with the above question that I'm talking 2-3 years after their first IP68 phone releases -- to give time for peoples' iPhone 6 and 6Ses to break / become obsolete.

More generally, anything else you think Apple could do that would dramatically cut down on the need for iPhone repair jobs?

What could dramatically cut down on data recovery jobs would be if people got the message to stop putting their phones in rice when wet, or automatic unlimited iCloud backup. All phones are circuit boards and I can't imagine a truly waterproof phone existing, but who knows. I think the key to healthy business is diversifying revenue streams. There will always be expensive new electronics that fail at board level, and people that will want to fix them rather than replace. Talk to people and see what kinds of board failures are out there. For example, I bought a piano a few weeks ago. At the piano shop I asked the guy what they do for repair of digital pianos that stop working. He said "they can't be repaired so we throw them away, we threw away a digital grand piano last week". WTF! The world is filled with folks that believe that things can't be repaired at board level, but with the right equipment that is generally not true.

[deleted]

Wow. Should your repair business start to slow, you could probably write a great book of stories like this. Your storytelling ability is pretty good.

Sidenote--almost missed this reply cause it wasn't in the right comment tree. Weird.

Thanks--I moved that comment where it belongs. Phone App posted it here, ugh.

Remember Web Rings from the 90s? I think we (consumers) need something similar for finding good, reliable board repair vendors that are a little closer to us. Mail-in is great, but I think the in-person experience is probably a lot more personal and becomes a learning experience in addition to getting your phone fixed.

Do you have a master list of actually good (not scam-artist) board repair folks across the country, or do you know anyone who's working on this? I mean, it's either that, or I pay Amtrak $96 for a round trip to New York and spend the better part of a day getting up there and back to get something fixed by you or Louis.

yes--i am working on this. I asked my Practical Board Repair School graduates (now over 100) to honestly rate their expertise as they've progressed after the course. iFixit has asked me for a list, and Ben Duffy---one of the best in the world has started a "masters list" that is invitation only to be added to it.

http://boardrepair.info/

I also will make personal recommendations if someone asks about anyone close to them and lists their city

Baltimore. Are the NY State Grand Masters (you and Louis) the nearest I can get? :P

Lisa Grant at mobile lizard cell phone repair knows what's up in Baltimore. I doubt she's doing touch ics but if my phone was wet in Baltimore I'd go to her for ultrasonic cleaning.

are your parents big marvel comic fans?

No, but they are big fans of automatic comment generator bots. I think you would like them.

What equipment do you use? (to open ipads, remove surface-mount components, antistatic devices etc). I still have an iphone 4 that, while getting slower, is still working well. Not sure if I'll update to a 7 or not .....

To open iPads I use the same Chinese heated mat that most shops use along with an iSesamo and some heat.

To remove SMD components--it depends on the context and size of the package. My go to tool is Hakko FM2023 mini hot tweezers for most small components on iPhones, and my JBC JT-A hot air station affectionately dubbed "God's Dick" by my friend Louis Rossmann to remove bga chips.

To open iPads I use the same Chinese heated mat that most shops use along with an iSesamo and some heat.

I used a hair dryer and a metal spudger before I got a heat gun. It went smoothly at first, but then I got overzealous and went too far too fast. I'm betting you are an expert now, but I gotta ask: worst iPad repair?

And do you accept for repair iDevices w/ damage from bodily fluids/toilet/urine? Professional curiosity.

Almost all wet phones are toilet phones, that is assumed. I generally try to make people feel better about and just say "Toilet phone, right?" The one that my friend Sunday dug out of a concert port-a-potty though....that was gross.

I actually don't do much 'screws and glues' repair anymore, so I think my worst iPad repair would have been my first one as a 'professional' aka Craigslister early on. I was sweating it because I was on the clock. The dude was coming back in one hour. I could NOT find his home button bracket. I was freaking out, how could it be gone? At the time I was working out of my dining room and didn't have a spare. I found it 10 minutes later---glued to my own forearm

Wait Wait Wait. Sunday did the digout of the porta-pot? Or it was brought to her? Hope you charged extra for that....

Sunday did the dig out. It was her personal phone. She dropped it in a portapotty, but didn't know which one. She realized her phone was missing and then remembered hearing a clunk when pissing earlier. So she did what any normal person would do--called the phone and left ridiculous messages "Hello? Is it dark in there? Do you see poop?" She then did what normal people do not do. She went to the kettle corn guy and got two giant bags to make gloves, then went back to the portapotties and leaned in like an insane person swirling her hands around in the bowels of hell. She picked the wrong one of course, and then regretted taking a second piss in the correct one which was adjacent. She called me "what should I do now?" How could I say "gross, throw it away" after all that? So I told her to come over the next day. Man that phone was gross, but it was less gross once we realized that the fulminate reek of shit in the room was coming from the baby she had on her lap while I was working on the phone, and not the phone itself. The ultimate fate of the phone was that it was under warranty, so I did something I'd never done before or since but had wanted to know if it was possible. I cleaned the phone so well and put it back together to look mint, even though it didn't power on. She took it to Apple and they didnt see the water damage and passed it as an in warranty phone and gave her a free replacement. That was when I really felt like I had achieved professional status. I hired Sunday the next day, and she has been indispensable ever since. Here's the video we made of that phone. http://youtu.be/HUQZZR6rKa4

Hello Jessa! Is it okay to use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol instead of 99% when cleaning an iPhone 6 to prevent corrosion?

99% is better than 70%. 70% is better than Jack Daniels, Jack Daniels is better than water, water is better than rice. Rice is better....nope. Rice is not better than nothing.

I am a lead tech/manager for a growing repair shop chain. I at times have struggled with getting quality items and parts I need for work due to cooperate standards of staying cheap. For instance screen quality is never the best and I literally have the most knock off hakko station, I may be lucky to use for 10 minutes without a sensor error. I had to beg for them to purchase a bigger tube of arctic silver 5 just last week. What would be your advise in asking for better equipment to do my job to the best of my ability? Sorry I'm asking for advise and not about touch ic disease.

I would immediately quit and open a competing shop. I think the great hope for the industry is in the smaller mom and pop shops that really understand repair---I call this "boutique repair" Consumers are right to be skeptical of 'corporate repair' which focuses on profitability over service, aka cheap parts.

At my shop, I almost always say "come on around back" and show people their phone under the microscope and spend time teaching them about how phones work and common problems. Everyone wants to see the inside of their phone. I am selling a fun experience on an otherwise shitty day. I am forthcoming with my parts costs and how I acquire them, I do not charge people for phones that I can't fix. People trust and respect the business, and that makes my job a lot of fun.

I can't imagine the misery of having to work for 'corporate repair' as a thinker and a fan of 'boutique repair' It sounds like you going to end up with a 'respect disconnect' working there, you'll feel frustrated and unappreciated. The cure for that is getting out and getting the respect you want by building a team of like-minded people passionate about fixing things and starting your own business.

Look at what happened to eTech Parts---two years ago a wonderful company that everyone in the industry respected and their employees loved working there. Bought by a corporate mind and now bankrupt 24 months later.

Nt necessarily about iPhones, but - I've had problems with my Android phones having the micro USB ports fail after about a year and a half consistently. Do you know why this happens?

It is a mechanical failure. Big clunky metal port soldered to thin board that gets daily mechanical stress. It is attached in the back by tiny feet soldered to the board. If you rock that connection enough times a foot will come loose. Plus these ports are made in a high throughput way where the ports feet rest on solder paste that goes in an oven and turns into a joint. It would be like putting a port on paper with a thin layer of elmers glue and letting it dry. If done by hand, you could use a toothpick to push the glue also on the top of the feet to encase them--which would be a stronger bond. That isn't possible so what you're left with is a relatively flimsy port. In the s3 these fail all day long and are an easy microsoldering fix. In the newer phones you can't get to the port without a lot of risky effort removing a bunch of glass and adhesive and a delicate screen.

It would be better if the world insisted on repairable phones where repairability went into design. The ports will fail, so we need reasonable access to change them. No phone should go to the grave because of a charge port.

is penis in vagina already sex? xd

Are two sets of 23 chromosomes in one cell already a person?

pls answer question :(

No.

Should the fed adopt higher inflation rate targets?

Let me ask my magic 8 ball....it says "Depends"