How I fixed „no service“ iPhone

In my previous post I described how I bought broken „no service“ (meaning no GSM signal) iPhone. Today I and one friend of mine Tom fixed that second hand device.

First I did my homework and found some useful pages. First, I already referred to ifixit.com which is very good resource. Some video How to Disassemble the iPhone 3G is also useful. Unfortunately none of the links above gives you any hint how to fix lost GSM signal.

Best resource I had was a page How I recovered my iPhone’s lost GSM signal!. I find out that my iPhone logic board is broken in exactly same place where the link above described, except a conductor were still there. It seems that previous owner didn’t remove „do not remove“ sticker and he tried to remove the board while screw was still there.

Then I ask Tom to bring his micro-solder. Plan was to connect 2 parts where board was broken. What was our surprise when we found that it is still conduct current (by voltmeter). Strange was that there wasn’t anything which should be connected to the antenna contact pad. After a while we decided to connect antenna under speaker/port pad directly to the board. The most tricky part was to gently wipe out the protective film (we used screwdriver for that) and then stick one single wire from UTP with micro-solder. Also nail polish is a good isolator for such occasions.

And that’s it. I have now full signal!