Iphone 5S Water Damage - Need to recover

[cheebster]

Hello ! I have this iphone 5s with water damage and i'd need to recover data from it. Water entered on right portion near the top corner, i attached microscope pictures of the damage. I tried to clean with acetone and toothbrush but i'm not used to these, i ripped some tiny SMD resistors/caps off it. I guess it could be fixed, but i wonder at this point;

Could i buy a clean board off ebay, say icloud locked and/or blackisted, and swap CPU/Baseband/Baseband memory?

I've found that the combo of these 3, i could get back into the data on the phone. Would the original home button be needed as well ?

I know this requires removal of the chips, reball and reinstall, but i can handle that, i've did much bigger chips in the past. I can reball a bga64 in about 5 minutes.

fusioninformatiquedotcom/temp/iphone/

Here are pictures there of the board damage and after i cleaned with the removed resistors. I don't know if i should work more on this one or use the solution i've found. This board doesn't do anything even with a new battery, no signs of life.

I've also tought about some other things, how do you guys give power to these phones, directly on the battery connector or passing through the dock ? If it's directly on the battery connector, do you use a variable PSU with about 4VDC ?

Also, i tought about an idea to troubleshoot these (or any electronics). The guy told me the board came very hot when he plugged back in after water damage. He could feel it thru the phone, i just wish it still did it.. I tought about using a FLIR ONE thermal camera, to find out which IC's overheated. Anyway, that's another story.

So i'm looking for input here, i may be off track completely, i just got this phone from a customer looking to get his data back. Thanks !!!

[jackie8]

NAND/HDD (the place where your Data is) is married to various other components like baseband. So you can not swap them and expect the phone to work again. The homebutton is linked to the logic board but only if you are about to restore the phone (which you do not want, since you want to recover data)
Where are you located ?

PS: reballing in this buisness is a pain on bigger IC'S you will not do anything in 5 min :-))

Multimeter in Diode Testing. Black to ground and red to each of the battery pins. Do you have a short on the lines ?

[cheebster]

Hi there ! No short on the battery terminals. Why is it a pain to reball that a7 cpu ? That vietnamiese guy on youtube does it with paste on a pair of old ***** in a couple seconds, it looks so ghetto, but he does it.

I'm in Canada ! You said it's married to various components, but that means CPU/NAND/Baseband, that's it ?

[jackie8]

Yes he does it but he is one skilled dude. Try it and see how your reball will make you mad because the Balls are uneven or a few balls missing etc. Also most stencils are horible. If you manage it like him, respect, good for you. Also no good idea to try something you never did before on a customernphone

[cheebster]

The customer already assume it's dead. I've reballed hundreds of chips, not something i've never done.. Most stencils are probably horrible, but i can also do it with paste/dispenser. It works fine.. Takes steady hands but i can do that quick too. But first, i need to know what are the chips that need to be swapped.

[jackie8]

Originally Posted by cheebster

Hi there ! No short on the battery terminals. Why is it a pain to reball that a7 cpu ? That vietnamiese guy on youtube does it with paste on a pair of old ***** in a couple seconds, it looks so ghetto, but he does it.

I'm in Canada ! You said it's married to various components, but that means CPU/NAND/Baseband, that's it ?

on the iphone 5 for example its bb,nand and that 601_rf ic not sure, have to look it up again.

But for the 5s it will be similar but then, i have never done a full swap on a 5s because ppl are not willing to pay for the work.

[cheebster]

Some people are, depends on the data. Can you get the phone working again if you do so ?

Say, you take a water damaged board, swap CPU, Baseband, Nand, and that IC, and the power button, put that on a 30$ icloud locked board. Working phone again, or no ?

If it works, you accomplish 2 things - 1-Data recovery, 2-working iphone 5s.

[jackie8]

another thing is: every phone i saw with swapped ics asked for a restore afterwards before then were usable (soft dfu mode). So Im pretty sure your best bet is to somehow revive the phone in its current form. Do you have a powersupply to connect it to the bare logicboard ?

edit: I can revive phone most of the time, maybe not to full function but enough for data recovery. Can you supply good quality pictures ? Your link above with added dots do not seem to work on my end.

[cheebster]

Hey. /temp/iphone/ on fusioninformatique dot com ? It should work. Ok about the restore.. So i could revive the hardware but not get data back. What makes it fall into the recovery mode, got a clue ?

I have many power supplies here. What do i need to use ? Can i just, cut the connector from a dead battery, connect the leads to a 4V power supply and it'll be fine ? I have a variable benchtop psu as well, up 10 15V 10a or so.

[jackie8]

I use those premade cables like this one, spares time to solder new wires every time i want to test someting: Free shipping power cable power supply line for Iphone 4 4S 5 5C 5S 6 6plus repair maintenance Interface cable 1m long-in Mobile Phone Cables from Phones & Telecommunications on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

Use not more than 5V to power it up and limit your max amp at first, in case you have a heave short. Important to note if you have power consumption only by attacking power to it. or if it is indeed completly dead.

Before I forget, I do not know why it has to restored after swaping. In my head I tell myself, you moved stuff into a new house and they do not know where to find stuff, so they have to settle in first (restored)


EEEEEEDIT; I wish i had looked at the pictures first. Do not attempt to put power through that phone in that state. Yo have to have shorts somewhere in the LCD and backlight area. You need a proper cleaning in a good quality ultrasonic cleaner after you removed those shields and then replace those burned and shorted caps, filter and coils. So you need some kind of dead 5s boards to steel parts from. To bad you are not from europe, I love to see pictures like this and turn those things into working machines again.

Btw. you will not only to revive the phone, but also the lcd area and touch because you have to "click" trust that computer after connecting it to itunes.

If you are not interessed in fixing it yourself and have a cheap way of sendind postal to europe, I would assist you on that matter if your customer is not in a hurry and want it at any cost.

Also can assist you with some tipps online but if it comes to finding the bad caps and components, you are on your own, since it can not be done online.

Hope you fix it, but it is so heavily corroded, looks like the customer took his time to come to you after the inital water exposer.

[cheebster]

Ok. I ordered that test cable, from china, and i'll order a sweep frequency ultrasonic cleaner. Maybe a boom microscope later on also, it'd be handy to have one.. Mine is fixed and it's bad..

So, it'll take a month or so before i start replaying on that one. Would a 200$ sweep ultrasonic cleaner from fleebay work ? Something like this :

Derui Stainless Steel 2L Ultrasonic Cleaner Parts 80W with Degas Sweep Dr DS20 | eBay

Also, i haven't come across a good PDF schematic of the iphone 5s. Do you have that handy ?

Other question, how do i limit current when plugging the phone into a bench top psu ? It's got variable voltage, but not variable current, how do you limit that ?

I'm interested in fixing it, it's not really a matter or money, more just getting it back to life. I'll probably spend more on tools than it's worth, but i guess, i could buy and fix some other devices in the future, and i'll have the tools.

[jackie8]

Thats the spirit! But try to reduce the corrosion otherwise it will be a Block of rust by the time you have your tools. I use a 1k Dollar crest maschine. Like it allot can not say much about other brands. The schematics wont be an issue

[myrakern]

Here is the easy way you can give it a try - by using iPhone Data Recovery. You just need to install and launch it on your computer, connect your iPhone 5s to computer, follow the direction to click button to recover your data. If your iPhone doesn't work. You can still use the second and third mode - Recover data from iCloud/iTunes backup files. If you don't know how it works, you can follow this guide:
How to recover data from water damaged iPhone 5s