Yesterday I went to a well known mobile phone reseller in town to sell them a new iPhone 6s that I got on contract. You see, I didn't need a new mobile phone as I am very happy with my Nexus 6P that I recently purchased off contract.
Anyways, my wife, having heard that I was going to the reseller, asked if I could get her old 5s sold as well - she'd just recontracted and got herself a 6s too. I said sure, and brought her old phone along.
Now, the process of selling iPhones are pretty hassle free if you ask me. All I had to do was furnish the shopkeeper with the original receipt as well as an ID, and the phone changed hands in a cash deal netting me a cool US$180ish profit. That'll go some ways in paying for my mobile plan (for around a year, and then some).
When I whipped out my wife's iPhone 5s for sale though, the darnedest thing: the phone simply refused to power up. Well, we did leave it uncharged for a month, I reasoned, and so it should show a flicker of life in 30mins or so. As it was, 30 minutes became an hour, and like any good story goes, an hour becomes 2.
I did some sleuthing online and diagnosed the problem as a fried U2 IC chip (USB IC). It was apparently a problem that plagued a generation of iPhone users who used 3rd party lightning cables to charge their phones. the problem being that:
- The apple lightning cable costs (allegedly) $3.50 to make and was sold at a gut wrenching $19 on the Apple store, and,
- 3rd party cables, being the cheap knockoffs that they are, did not come with fancy electronic voltage regulators which would have protected the dainty U2 chip from being fried.
Since we came from an age where cables were dumb, 3rd party cables seemed a cheap and no-brainer alternative to Apple's extortionate pricing policy. Alas, we have a bricked phone to show for it now.
The reason why the U2 IC chip was important stems from the fact that it seemed to be a controller that supplied power to the iPhone's Home and Power buttons, and when the battery's charge went below a certain level, it refused to allow recharging to occur.
So now I'm stuck. The phone would have sold for about US$120 if it would just power up, but I couldn't possibly power it up if the phone refuses to receive a charge. Worse yet, the fried U2 IC meant that a hard reset was impossible (Home and Power buttons deactivated).
Well, here's where the hack comes in. Further Google-fu pointed me to the fact that some dark artists on the interwebs have managed to charge their iPhone battery "directly" - literally putting a red and black wire directly on the +5v and GND leads on the battery pack of a partially disassembled iPhone. This could work.
First, some prep work. An old USB cable was sliced, and the red and black wires isolated. my +5v and GND source. This will be plugged into my trusty xiaomi power bank to provide the requisite charge.
Next, using my trusty pentalobe screwdriver and my car GPS holder's suction cup, I somehow managed (to no small effort) to remove the iPhone's screen assembly without breaking anything.
Following the veritable ifixit's iPhone 5s disassembly guide, I realised that the screen assembly was held to the main chassis by 3 ribbon cables, all secured under a metal guard that was held by 4 Philips head screws. Now, the really screwy thing about this whole deal was that the 4 screws were all of different lengths and makes - get this, they were (in no particular order), a 1.2mm screw, a 1.3mm screw, and 2x 1.7mm screws, one of which was not magnetisable. Great work, Apple!
Anyhow - with that trap successfully thwarted, I was left looking at an exposed battery lead with 3 female pin headers. A quick search yielded the pin outs, namely (furthest away to nearest the battery), +5v, "fuel remaining gauge", GND.
Red to +5v, black to GND. A little prayer, then plug the USB A end to power bank. A spark! A spark of life maybe? It was still way too early to tell. Without the help of alligator clips (I didn't have them) or sticky tape (too lazy), I was left holding the wires directly to the pins on the battery pack manually for 2 minutes straight.
After counting in my head to the completely arbitrarily chosen a Hundred and Twenty, I figured the iPhone's battery pack should now hold enough charge to work around the U2 IC's imposed limitation. I quickly popped all the screen assembly's ribbon cables back into their home orifices, and without fully assembling the phone, plugged into the phone a lightning cable that is usually used to charge my iPad on my study desk.
Two thin red bars in the outline of a very empty looking battery appeared on screen. Success! I went ahead and reassembled the phone, and left the little tike alone for awhile to sip juice.
About half an hour later, as I was working on my PC, I heard a vibration, then an Apple logo showed up, and then the screen shone white. It said "HELLO" from the other side.
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