How I Made My Own iPhone in China [video]

Apple's $100+ billion in cash suggests that there's quite a bit of fat in the price for the iPhone.

> Ive replaced essentailly every part in the phone but the mainboard

For fun? Or what? I have several relatives who still have iPhone 4 and 5 (and one with a 3!), and none of them have replaced any components. Why would you need to?

Hey: Don't work in IT but do play a lot in it, I'm probably an atypical HN reader being "outside of the bubble" but have always wished I had pursued a career in IT.. Anyway..

As a sideline to my daily job that pays national average I spent a couple of years repairing iPhones for friends, family and colleagues, mainly screen replacement which are trivial after a few, but also battery / switch / button / port replacements which are also trivial but often require a small insight into the mechanics of the part as differing screw lengths, different torquing forces etc can Stop power buttons depressing smoothly, all the way down to minor board level repair with (single SMT component replacements, a few BGA REFLOWS { which have a relatively low success rate with only a hot air station }).

The biggest tips I would give to anyone who wants to perform trivial repairs such as battery replacements is to buy a quality set of screwdrivers (PH000, PH00, pentalobe for iPhone, flathead that will be used 2 or 3 times per board) an openesesame type pry tool, a rigid pry tool (never lever against the board, always the side of the case and then with care)' a cheap suction device to remove the screen, a spare set of screws for your phone (you will lose screws with quite a frequency). Apart from that buy some E6000 glue with small applicator nozzle, some quality superglue (sometimes it's needed), small amounts of Methy Ethyl Ketone (MEK) solvent as well as 99.9% Isopropyl Acohol (IPA is often mixed 70/30 with water for medical purposes, don't use this).

Always keep your screen away from the solvents, MEK will dissolve even the most stubborn glue on the battery, IPA Should be used with a cotton bud (Q-Tip for the Americans?) to lightly clean both male and female FPC connectors prior to replacement, let the solvents dry before putting your screen close.

Apply a small amount if E6000 to everything that's meant to already have adhesive pads on, and with regard to screen replacements the FPCS for then LCD, digitiser, screen auxiliaries (earpiece, front camera) has a metal cover which keeps everything secure, one or two of the screws is a fraction of a mm shorter than another, put the longer one in the shorter hole and you get a BSOD where you have cut screwed through a layer of PCB to the next and broken its trace.

The biggest watch out is that spare parts come in 3 categories, reused from original iPhone, generally superior, "OEM" grade (thought strictly they probably aren't OEM, but they are superior grade) and generic. Try to avoid the generic, often the original/OEM are a few £/$ more expensive but when you've spend an hour stripping a phone and installing a part only for it to not work or to have a partial defect, you will wish you bought quality (anyone remember the black iPhone 4 with the proximity/ambient light sensor from hell, until you used a genuine part that had a polarised film and small foam gasket that stopped ambient light creeping in from the backlight?