I celebrated a bit too early.

Even after the "lobotomy" of the iphone, I noticed that the battery is still draining relatively fast. That means it doesn't drain in a few hours (like it did before) but in a day (around 12h) with moderate use. So I decided to additionally destroy wifi chip a bit more (as I didn't quite finished it the last time, thought it was enough). But that didn't quite work as intended when I reassembled the phone. Battery was draining very fast, and I disassembled it again, almost drilled a hole on the place where wifi chip once stood and tested the phone again. It wasn't getting warm so I decided to go to bed and leave iphone unplugged so I can see if the battery lasts more than few hours. In the morning, battery was dead. Great, so I had to open it once again. Its funny how those one-time use only casings (as is iphone's and ipod's) open ever more easly every single time. Upon closer inspection of the wifi chip, I noticed a very small (I guess) resistor stuck between his leads and comm board's protective metal casing. So i removed it and removed probably every last memory of a wifi chip from the board. Now, there are three hours past since the full charge; there is no heat and battery indicator is still full. This is a good sign. I'll keep you posted whatever happens.

I just hope the battery will now last as a normal iphone's. I'm not really sure it will, because those fast battery drains surely damaged the battery. But one can only hope.

Oh, almost forgot, keep fingers crossed because my other friend is going to san fran on a business meeting and to buy me another iphone. I'm not really sure he'll get one because as I read on the web, there is a shortage of iphones as iphone gen 2 is probably going to be presented at monday's wwdc (9/6/2008).

Photos of the iPhone's comm board with partially destroyed wifi chip.

all photos by prosperouspoverty.blogspot.com

iPhone #2, finally solved the problem

Remember the wifi-less iPhone that I have? Well, of course you do. Today I made history (or almost;) for every people who has a broken DOA wifi. As you probably know, my iphone had DOA wifi (greyed out) and as a consequence a fast draining battery (dead in a matter of hours, even faster if you use other functions). I got sick of this all, I tried every possible software hack to somehow enable wifi but to no avail (almost bricked it couple of times). There was just no wifi, and a dead battery in a matter of hours. I just got sick of this all and I decided to remove the wifi chip/IC from the iphone's comm board. Why I wanted to just remove the chip? Probably it was causing some short circuit or low resistance so the battery drained extremely fast. So my logic was: no wifi chip == no short circuit == no battery drain == no extra heat.

There is a guide how to replace comm board on ifixit but I "just" wanted to get to comm board and remove the wifi chip.

photo by ifixit.com, edited by prosperouspoverty.blogspot.com

So I followed the guide how to disassemble the iphone and followed it almost to the letter. On the guide they are using some special tools like thin metal spudger and iphone opening tool. None of this I had but actually there were not necessary. What tools did I use then instead? Victorinox's swiss army knife (small blade and can opener, tweezers, and plastic toothpick), paper clip, small pointed pliers and finally some really small philips screwdriver. I tried no to completely destroy the lower plastic part but I managed somehow to open the case. I read couple of use experiences not to accidentally short circuit the battery because it has exposed leads. Well, truth be told, I disassembled quite a few electronic devices so I wasn't really a noob when opening the iphone. I had a small problem with disconnecting the antenna wires because the connector as you can see on the picture are really small, fragile and under a rubberish glue.

photo by ifixit.com

They used the plastic tool to remove them but this is not the best way to remove it. First you need to remove the rubberish glue (thankfully it isn't plastic glue) with tweezers, small knife and then you very gently pull up the connector with pointed pliers. Doing the way it is shown on the picture you will probably get bent connectors (which are, again, very fragile) and that could mean you cannot reattach them when you are finished.

But what am I saying? If you are going to remove the wifi chip you dont' need to remove those wires. Anyways I just got carried away with the guide so I kept disassembling. Removing those wires wasn't necessary and after I realized that I took out the upper part of the metal casing which is protecting the comm board chips. I was afraid of this step more than any because frequently those cases are made very solid and no to be opened again. But I was pleasantly surprised because this one opened easily. I located the wifi chip (much in advance though because I was staring at those pictures months ago) and found out that it was glued (hmm, not a right word, and I don't know the technical term here) to the board. It is just a minuscule block of silicone and without any visible connections. All of the connections are on the "inside" part of the chip. So in an adrenaline rush I destroyed the wifi chip with the can opener. I was very careful not to leave any part of the silicone debris which formed on the board. Afterwards, I reassembled everything and to my horror, the phone wouldn't turn on. I connected it to pc and it booted. Everything after that was ok.

I was kinda nervous to see if the battery is still draining (and the phone case was mildly warm, which wasn't a good sign) but 3 hours passed and battery indicator was full. So it was all fine finally. I polished the lower plastic part of the case with a fine sand paper so it almost looks as a new phone. All in all, I took a gamble and it payed off.

Quick sidenote:

As I finally seen the interior of a iphone I can draw some conclusions concerning battery replacement.

As it is, battery is relatively easy to replace if you know how to hold a small knife in your hands and solder 3 joints. One problem is slight disfiguration of the plastic back bottom of the case. This can be remedied in part with some sanding.

There was a lot of talk how iphone's battery is so squeezed it cannot be user replaceable. This is just bullshit. I've seen mobile phones who had batteries placed so precisely it was a matter of microns. Another argument it crops out here and there is that for a user replacement battery, to be replaceable, it need to be in plastic case. That is rubbish, because in that argument it was secretly presumed that plastic casings are huge. Which isn't more further from the truth. At least they could do tight plastic "bag" which some home cordless phones had. One thing I'm pretty irritated about is connection between battery and comm board. Those wires are soldered directly to the board and it seems somewhat clumsily. All over the phone there are very delicate and miniature connectors and they could do a small connector to connect the battery and the board. They did it this way just to make sure that if even if you can open the phone (as pretty much anyone can do) you can't resolder the wires because not many people even have soldering equipment, and even less would like to resolder their phone.

Small edit: I just wanted to link this post to my other posts with regard to the same problem:

 

The part before this (with much better photos).

This is the last part of the wifi agony.