Almost everyone wants a new iPhone!
When you think about buying a new iPhone, many of us may be reminded of the iPhone 6 series. When they first came out with their sleek design and bigger screens, they were the coolest thing Apple had ever done with mobile devices! However, many of also remember the touch fault with the iPhone 6 and 6 plus. In case you have forgotten, I will refresh your memory. The touch IC chips on the circuit board were not protected by what technicians call “underfill”. This made the chips much more susceptible to damage after drops or bending (and we all know how easily iPhone 6 plus bends). The chips are soldered on with micro tiny solder points that contact different traces in the board linking to power and the processor etc. The circuit board is screwed into the back frame in multiple places. This means there is no relief for a drop.
The circuit board on an iPhone will absorb the shock, unlike the Samsung phones with a sort of, a floating board. After some time, these chips will become cracked and loose underneath causing the touch to fail. Technicians around the globe have been repairing these devices since the discovery of the defect made into the board. Apple at first denied it and blamed it on the customer. They finally admitted that it just might be a defect in the way the board was built and they finally decided to fix this for people… for a small fee of $159.
This leads me to the point:
When people ask me what phone to upgrade to, I tell them not the iPhone 7.
Buying a new iPhone 7 leads to similar issues.
Much like the 6 plus (even worse than the 6 plus, really) the iPhone 7 is highly prone to circuit board damage after drops. We have seen: searching no service, glitchy touch function, loss of audio, charging failure, and boot looping (meaning Apple – nothing – Apple – nothing) endlessly. Drops can also cause shorts leading to the baseband CPU which means send it some flowers because it’s all over for your iPhone 7. Often these points are held together much like a broken egg in a carton. When you go in for a screen change and the plates are removed then put back on, these underlying issues show their ugly faces! To determine that this is a board issue we will sometimes have to go through a lengthy process of elimination. This causes frustration for the iPhone owner and loss of sleep for the technicians! These are things everyone needs to consider before buying a new iPhone!
A Real Life Example.
Jessa Jones of iPad Rehab in New York knows more about iPhone circuit board repair than any of us. She was recently featured on Good Morning America because of all the attention she’s getting from her vast knowledge of board repair and data recovery. I am proud to say I studied circuit board repair in her class last year. And no, she does not get any sleep. Her videos solving these problems often keep her at her shop on a live feed until 1 or 2 am. She and other micro soldering techs have put in long hours of blood sweat and tears to find out what Apple won’t share, or won’t admit.
Jessa calls the iPhone 7 faults in the chips “flexion based faults” meaning the major chips causing issues and losing contact are on a fault line. These chips are next to the weakest points on the board at sim tray where the board can flex. The sim tray takes up a lot of space and is soldered to the board causing the board to weaken in the middle. Since the circuit board is screwed into the back frame, every time it is dropped or handled roughly, it is bending with the frame and absorbing shock. Of course, the weak point is, after all, the weak point, so the chips near there become loose or damaged. At that point you have no other option than to upgrade or bring it to someone, like Houston iPhone Screen Repair, to have it repaired.
What’s the best phone, then?
So, what phone is best to upgrade to? Well the pixel for one, but since I am speaking to my iPhone lovers, all I can say is not the 7. If you are thinking of buying a refurbished iPhone 7, definitely do not do it. That means the previous owner has already started the process of the circuit board faults and whoever refurbished it just slapped another screen on it and sent it back out to the public.
This means they didn’t test the board for those underlying issues. If Apple would bring back the 6S only faster with more memory that would be awesome for everyone. But since we only move forward, I would say wait for the upgrade. Let’s find out what problems the 8 and the X will be prone to have. I would take the risk and say it can’t be worse than the 7 but we won’t know until there is more feedback out there.
And if you really want to know what kind of phone to buy or what kind of problems are out there, don’t ask Google. Don’t ask Apple. Make a trip to your local 3rd party repair shop and ask the real technicians.
So, tell us, what are your thoughts on buying a new iPhone?
