No Clue and Relying on “Howtos”? Avoid!
Introduction
Many people looking to have their valuable phone or tablet repaired might be interested- or put more bluntly, shocked- to find out how little many repair technicians actually know… and how reliant they are on beginners’ howto “guides” found online.
There are lots of them out there, either in video or written form. We know of one guy spotted following a YouTube video while he did the customer’s repair. (Spoiler; the guy’s repair attempt wasn’t successful- in fact, he made things worse).
Does any of this matter in practice? Yes, it does- and here’s why.
Not as Simple as it Looks
If you Google (for example) “iphone 6 no backlight”, and come across a guide that supposedly shows you how to fix it, it doesn’t necessarily cover what’s causing the problem in your case. There are many reasons that a backlight may go- it’s made up of several components and connected to other parts of the system. If something goes it goes for a reason- you need to use your brain and a multimeter to figure out the problem.
If someone’s relying on guides as a substitute for experience, they’re not going to know what to do when it turns out the guide they’re using doesn’t help with the repair they’re working on. Many won’t even have the experience to realise that’s the problem- they’ll blindly follow instructions because they think it is that simple (and they don’t know any better). Then they’ll wonder why their repair hasn’t worked.
Usually at this point they get desperate and start making “please bro” type requests on forums, hoping they’ll get all the answers on a plate.
(If they still can’t get it fixed, chances are it’ll be returned to you as “unrepairable” even though someone who knew what they were doing might still be able to repair it).
Turns out that smartphone repair isn’t as simple as it looks, needs skill and experience to spot some problems, and can’t always be reduced to ten easy-to-follow steps. Who’d have guessed?
The Important Points
- Many repair stores lack experience and rely on blindly following canned “how to” guides.
- These “guides” don’t come close to covering all cases, especially as many problems can have different causes.
- Your phone or tablet can be made worse by a repair centre that doesn’t know what it’s doing.
- Trial-and-error repair or bypassing (rather than replacing) faulty components are an unreliable and dangerous way of carrying out repairs.
- We have the experience and skills to intelligently diagnose and repair faults without resorting to this.
How They Can Make Things Worse
Of course, by now there’s a good chance their clueless repair attempt has already made things far worse than before– even if you hand it over to someone who knows what they’re doing
For example, iPhone motherboards have standoffs with holes for screws in them. Did you know that if you use a screw that’s even slightly too large, it’ll go into the motherboard itself, damaging electrical tracks. Worse, since all iPhone motherboards are multilayer, if the inside layers get damaged, these are much harder to fix.
How We Do It
We have years of experience in repairing smartphones and tablets- and there’s no substitute for that. We’ll use multimeters to spot damaged tracks and components, and we have a massive library of circuit diagrams and schematics to help us find the source of the problem and diagnose it correctly.
Yes, we do research and improve our skills via online guides and other resources- but we know that they need to be seen in context and can’t just be followed blindly. Every job is different, and we rely on our experience to know when a particular approach is- or isn’t- applicable to a current job. Even when it does, there’s a good chance something will happen that isn’t covered by the guide.
Simply swapping out components without any understanding- effectively a trial and error approach- is no way to fix a phone. Nor is “jumping” (i.e. bypassing) damaged components; even when this appears to work at first it can be disastrous. (Surprise- they were there for a reason and it turns out Apple and Samsung didn’t just add those filters, capacitors and resistors for the fun of it).
Other stores really need to think about what they’re doing before they jump and replace parts without diagnosing the fault correctly.
A Real-Life “Trial and Error” Repair Disaster
iPhone motherboard standoff with screw hole in the middle.
Damaged caused by a previous botched repair attempt.
After we’ve repaired and replaced the damaged components.
The iPhone now in working order.
We were handed this repair after another store had attempted to fix it- their diagnosis was that the backlight needed to be repaired (which itself could be down to a number of different faults).
While technically this was correct, they probably made the problem worse when they tried to repair it themselves.
We suspect the initial problem was long screw damage (as we mentioned above) caused by using the wrong length of screw when re-attaching the LCD plate. They didn’t realise this was the cause, and instead they “jumped” what they thought was a filter- but instead turned out to be a capacitor- causing a dead short in the backlight circuit.
This in turn blew the diode, IC, coil and six other capacitors that needed to be replaced! Easy enough for us to repair- the customer got lucky in this case- but it would have been unnecessary if the fault hadn’t been incorrectly diagnosed and mis-repaired in the first place.
After we replaced these components and repaired the long screw damage, the iPhone was back in perfect working order.
