51–60 of 74 posts
Cool. Haven't seen anyone doing precision chip removal with a CNC mill/router before, but it makes sense for this situation and was done well. :)
This is ridiculous Apple should just include a microSD slot. Who even uses 512GB of storage on a phone? It's a stupid way to try to rip off the wealthy.
This is impressive, but... what is so terrible about a Micro SD slot? Knowing, of course, that Apple products don't have one as a rule but my current (cheap) Android phone still does, and storage expansion is a matter of spending $30 at Costco.
If you rely on one for anything professional you know what's so terrible about a Micro SD slot. Even pro DSLR camera bodies using top of the line Micro SD tend to fail, that's why they come with two slots that you write to in parallel. // Also, iPhones since getting rid of SIM tray work after days to weeks under fresh or even salt water. That's harder to pull off with slots. More people need their phone to keep worki…
What's going on around 7:40 when it looks like something is being vaporized onto the new chip?
The video omits crucial details aside from the physical act of removing the original and soldering the new NAND. I know for a fact failing to copy original details results in failure to restore iOS with specific error codes, so I wonder what this video did. I've successfully done this many times back in the iPhone 6S days where the original chip was desoldered, read by a Chinese-made reader, and finally the identifie…
I don't repair/upgrade iPhones or anything, and I'm an EE not a trained technician, but I do need to swap BGAs from time to time and my rework rate for 0.4mm pitch BGAs is not the best. It works say, 3 of 4 times. But compared to colleagues I'm pretty good. But that rate is way too low to run any kind of viable business, I would think.
In this situation you're doing literally the same rework over and over, which helps, and probably have equipment and stencils specific to the job, which helps.
So I'm curious what kind of success rate was achieved if you don't mind sharing.
This is cool, no doubt about that. And fascinating due to the sheer complexity and amount of fine detail work required. But. Uh. For all that work, Why not upgrade it to an amount of storage you couldn’t otherwise get? Or at least max it out?
He's running a repair shop, so used market.
>But. Uh. For all that work
The difference between 128GB and 512GB on the used iPhone 15 market is $200+. he's probably buying the 512GB NAND IC for $25-40. If you're a repair shop you already have all the needed tools and jigs except the maybe the CNC mill, which is about $3-4K. The only things we don't know is how long it takes and the failure rate, but the process (especially the CNC milling part) looks pretty consistent and repeatable, so I'd not be surprised to learn he's profiting off this.
I started watching this assuming that the nand is either slotted in or would be de-sodered. Then the micrometer scale calibration gauges for the milling machine came out and I realized what was about to happen. Quality work!
Definitely a "wait where is this going" moment. Had no idea CNCing away BGA chips is a thing
The care taken can only be described as mesmerizing. If you want proof that Apple is full of it and the whole "bootleg parts can compromise security," then here it is. Apparently, a lid close sensor is a major security risk - where NAND is not?
Nobody sane would ever try to design a secure system that trusted commodity NAND parts. Secure boot and encrypted storage are literally the first things to tackle when trying to secure/lock down a device against hardware-based attacks.
And isn't the lid sensor issue more a matter of calibration rather than a security measure?
Cool. Haven't seen anyone doing precision chip removal with a CNC mill/router before, but it makes sense for this situation and was done well. :)