Tag Archives: iPhone Repair

All posts related to iPhone Repair, including repair tips, specific iPhone generation repair details, iPhone parts, and repair news.

iDiagnose – Part 1 – Non-responsive home button

iDiagnose – A brief introduction

We’re starting a new series of blogs here that we’re calling iDiagnose. Purpose of this is to inform our readers of common, yet frustrating problems, how to diagnose them, and most important, how to fix them(using a repair service or DIY), without breaking your bank. We’ll be posting these very frequently so check back often for new tips, updates, and some killer thoughts that you may, or may not have heard about.

Each problem will have a difficulty rating for those of you out there who are more of the self-taught, do-it-yourself repair tech.We will also state how quickly our professional technicians will fix the problem for you.

Here goes nothing, hope you all enjoy! Oh, almost forgot, if you’re searching for a solution to a problem, drop us a line([email protected] or 888-494-iFix(4349), we’ll be more than happy to help you out and give you a cause/solution for your problem!

iDiagnose – Part 1 – The faulty home button

You press and press and press, yet nothing happens, or maybe sometimes you get it to respond. Pressing it harder isn’t always the best idea since you risk breaking other feature with increased pressure. Home button failure is a very common issue with all models of iPhones, new and old. It gets frustrating, and worst of all, you have a hard time justifying to send it off to an iPhone repair service for ‘just the home button’ since everything else is working.

A full functioning home button is a key factor to the amount of joy you have using when using your iPhone. There is a direct correlation between happiness and how well your iPhone is working. Statistics show that during the rather short lived life of your iPhone home button, it will have been clicked on average, 64 times a day, or 23360 times a year, or 46720 in its’ bound to AT&T ‘contract life.’

Right now you’re saying really? How the h*@l did they get that statistic. We didn’t. And honestly, we’re not 100% sure how many times it is clicked, but it is a lot, that’s for sure!

Problems with the home button come from:

  1. The button itself is shot from repetitive pressing/usage
  2. The prongs under the frame wore out, got corroded, or broke
  3. Water got in the crack between the glass and button
  4. The dock connector failed – Dock connector? What does the home button have anything to do with the dock connector? On the bottom side of the frame that holds the iPhone glass, there are some metal contacts that touch the top of the dock connector, that send the signal when pressed to the motherboard(the brain) of the iPhone. If the dock connector fails, no more functioning home button
  5. Lastly the rarest – The connector on the the motherboard shorted leaving this function permanently inoperable.

Of these 5, the worn out button(#1) covers about 3 out of 5 home button failures.

DIY Repair Difficulty – 8/10 – Very difficult

If you’re the type to do-it-yourself, the iPhone 3G home button repair and the iPhone 3Gs home button repair is quite a tough repair. It requires seperating the glass from the frame….here comes the tough part…without damaging the glass or scratching the back side. If the glass is in good condition, you’re in for a good challenge. Prime time to change the glass, is if your glass is already cracked and you’re planning on either using an iPhone Repair Service or purchasing iPhone Parts to DIY.

Turnaround time on iPhone home button repair – Same day

You read that correctly. All you need to do is send in your iPhone for repair to our facility located in Florida, we will fix it the same day it is received here, and ship it back to you. All deliveries that we get here by 1pm, get fixed and shipped out the same day.  Whether you’re local in Palm Beach County, or a distant customer in Alaska, iFixYouri can fix this problem for you quickly.

That’s all for this week folks! Have a good weekend and we look forward to our next iDiagnose session with you.

Not all pieces of iPhone glass are created equal

Interested in learning the truth about iPhone Screen Repair and iPhone Glass Repair?

First off, let’s start with a brief lesson on how the iPhone glass and digitizer works.

Glass

The glass, well it’s just that, glass. Not much too it? Wrong. You get cheap glass, yes, it will crack way easier than high-strength glass. Cheap glass will break in shards, while tempered glass will more spider around the area it broke. Apple uses toughened glass on all their iPhones, new, and old. This glass generally has been treated thermally, and/or chemically, while the cheap glass has not.

Digitizer

The digitizer is what responds to your touch, when you touch the glass. Think of it as a second piece of glass, glued directly to the bottom side of the piece of glass you touch.  Now you’re curious as to how the digitizer works? The digitizer is setup like a grid. Picture the digitizer being a piece of graphing paper. Many squares, each square being a point that you can touch. When you touch it, a signal is created and sent to the motherboard, which creates an action on the screen(panning, zooming, selecting an application, etc).

Cheap iPhone Replacement Parts

Cheap glass uses cheap parts, cheap digitizer. How does your phone act when you have a cheap digitizer? The grid we just talked about, well the squares in the grid become much bigger, which makes the touch response a lot more inaccurate, choppy, slow. Your finger swipe won’t swipe smoothly, your texting may be off, and the most annoying part of it all, your iPhone will not run smoothly. Additionally, with cheap glass, the factories will use cheap glue to adhere the glass and the digitizer. A minor jolt can dislodge the digitizer and render it inaccurate, or worst case inoperable. Cheap replacement parts will also not always sit flush to the iPhone. The home button may sit recessed and the glass may sit above the chrome bezel.

Adhessive

There are two different types of adhessives.

  1. 2 Piece – Covers just the top and the bottom of the iPhone. Does not give you full side coverage seal, which can easily introduce dust under the screen
  2. 1 Piece – Covers the entire frame. Provides full side coverage. Prevents dust from entering between the screen and LCD.

iFixYouri uses only the highest grade glass in combination with full frame adhesive, providing you with that near factory fit and feel that your high dollar item requires.  Whether your looking to do-it-yourself or you want to use an iPhone repair service, be sure that you go with one result in mind, quality.

Apple apologizes as AT&T puts pre-order on hold

On June 24th, 2010, a giant will fall to its’ knees, temporarily of course…

With the pre-order date for the June 24th, 2010 release of the up-and-coming iPhone 4 now passed, Apple’s servers were overwhelmed with traffic on June 15th. Over 600,000 pre-orders were placed, bringing the mobile computing giant to its knees.

AT&T’s website is no longer taking pre-orders, and Apple’s website has pushed all orders out by weeks. Estimates show that the sales figures so far for the iPhone 4 are 10 times that of it’s immediate predecessor, the iPhone 3Gs. We have our iPhone parts and iPhone Repair services team ready to roll for the first of these pre-orders to break.

An AT&T spokesperson said…

“Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we’re suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we’ve already received,”

The sheer chaos at both AT&T and Apple Stores alike, brought systems to a near stand-still. AT&T employees had to manually write down customers information, while Apple employees, still using computers, were bogged down and nearly slowed to a complete halt.

Apple was not prepared for this. As stated by an Apple representative:

“[The number of pre-orders] was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”

When June 24th comes around, be sure to see more system failures, many dissatisfied customers, and slower 3G speeds if this is any pre-indication of what is to come.

Many of us loyal Apple iPhone users remember when Apple “changed everything” with the release of the Original iPhone, and the problems AT&T had with that. We anticipate a sleeker design and different iPhone 4repair process than before, involving the how the screen and LCD are put together.

AT&T’s system malfunction sets a new high for traffic to their online store, a staggering 13 million visitors. Many users, when logging into their accounts to check their upgrade eligibility, noticed something weird about what they saw. They were actually able to view other customer’s accounts, including their information.

This crash, glitch, whatever you want to call it sets another milestone for AT&T. First, the original iPhone crashed their systems. Then the 3G followed in its’ footsteps. And now the latest and greatest, the one who will ‘change everything. Again.’ is gearing up and ready to cripple the wireless giant one again in what is going to be quite an unprecedented release.

iPhone 4 Glass – Will it break?

We here at iFixYouri did a little science experiment the other day with some of our newest iPhone parts. Many people have been talking that the new iPhone has strong glass, less prone to scratching, 30 times stronger than plastic, etc. Will the new glass prove to be ultra strong and never break?

I’m going to go with a no on this one. Why may you ask? They do say that it is 30 times stronger than plastic, and there is a video of it bending. Bending, yes. They did also state that the iPhone 3Gs Glass was stronger when that came out as well. It may bend more, but can it handle shock and sudden impact, that is the real question. That is what causes 95% of glass shattering. Not because you bent the glass in your pocket, not because you dropped it and it bent, but really because of sudden impact.

Land it flat on the ground, and it will smash. We have evidence. Before i show you the evidence, I am going to point out a design flaw that will bite them in the future. On the new iPhone, the glass basically sits on top of the aluminum frame. On the old iphone, it was recessed and protected by a chrome bezel.

We have a full iPhone 4(minus the circuit board), here at our shop and decided to do a little drop test. This drop was performed from 3.5 ft up. The iPhone 4 did survive 2 drops, as expected, but on the 3rd drop there was a loud POP, and yet again, shattered glass.

We will continue to be the leader in iPhone Repair, and now iPhone 4 Repair.

More updates/pictures here!

Since this posting has got waves from many people, we’re going to clear a few things up here.

1) People are saying, “there’s no way you have iPhone 4 parts yet, the phone isn’t even out!”

  • The fact is, is that we’re a repair shop. Along with other major repair shops, we’re able to receive parts earlier than most. A simple google search will show that not only us, but other top players in the ‘iphone repair’ world, do in fact have these parts. We did put out a press release on June 3rd stating that we had the parts. This is no secret. A rather large competitor had them as earlier as May 19th. This is also widely spread on the internet

2) You hit it with a hammer

  • Uhmmm…no…we didn’t. That’s the most ridiculous thing we’ve heard.

3) Fake

  • We’re going to go with a no on this one as well. iPhone 4 Parts are available to all major repair shops…just seek and you shall see. Google ‘iphone repair’ and check some of the top competitor sites…they’re all ramped up and ready to service iPhone 4’s.

Here’s EXACTLY how it went down…if you want to read more into it, go for it. But honestly, and truthfully, this is the EXACT re-enactment of what happened:

It was a hot day on June 7th, 2010 and us here at the shop had just finished listening to the keynote by the great Steve Jobs. He had made a statement that the glass was stronger, more bendable, etc. After hearing that, one of our techs said “We should test a piece of the glass that we have in stock(iphone 4 glass that is).”

We proceeded down the hallway with our assembled iPhone 4(minus the internal circuit board), stepped out the front door and out to the side walk. Our tech held the phone(front facing the ground), and dropped it. Nothing(drop 1-we were very impressed). Drop 2, nothing. Drop 3, smash. He dropped it flat on the face and it popped. The all too familiar pop sound that some of us beloved iPhone users fear for.

As we sat talking about it, we decided to show our results on our blog, so that our readers could see what we had found. Not expecting it to take wind the way it did.

That is all…no ulterior motive…just to show our readers what had happened. That is it.

Please do yourselves a favor and check some competitor sites and you will see that the iPhone 4 parts aren’t as rare and elusive as you may think. There are numerous places out there with iPhone 4 parts already.

Broken iPhones at Sunfest

As I walked into Sunfest in West Palm Beach, I decided to look for everyone that had iPhones.

Wow!!! For every 10 people I saw, 2-3 had iPhones. Not even just that but at least 1 had a cracked screen. It makes me wonder why people don’t get them fixed, either by iFixYouri or another company? The only thing I can think of is that they just don’t know that they can be fixed. I stood in line to get a sausage, which was awesome, and I started speaking to a girl behind me. She had an iPhone 3gs and sure enough the screen was cracked. I told her that we could fix that in twenty minutes or less. She had no idea. She just thought instead of spending $400 on a new one, she would just wait for the new 4g to come out. She was so happy that she actually gave me a hug and bought me my sausage and peppers. Thanks, Tiffany!

She will be coming in on Monday to her iPhone screen repair.  So, in closing, if you have a cracked iPhone screen, you can get it repaired. If you know someone that has any problem what so ever with their iPhone, let them know, iFixYouri can help them. Enjoy the last day of Sunfest iWorld.