A whole bunch of DIY stuff goes not so well
- The situation: A Virginia man sent his device in for an iPad repair after a series of do-it-yourself attempts went awry.
- What caused it: The precipitating incident – the one that caused the dominos to start falling – was the moment the man's young daughter dropped the device on the sidewalk. A brick sidewalk, we might add. That fall caused some screen damage. But, being a tech-savvy guy, this customer decided to embark on a DIY repair, which is not a bad route to go as long as you know exactly what you're doing. First, he replaced the screen, a process that seemed to go well until he realized that after the new screen was in, the device's Wi-Fi antenna didn't work and the power button had ceased to function. Uh oh. Just like that, the man found himself in deeper water than when he'd started. He then replaced both the on-off button and the antenna, but after doing that, realized that the device – which had been able to power on when plugged in before – was now only rarely turning on at all. His next decision was perhaps the best of the ones he made: He decided to send the device to us for repair.
- The solution: The man has specifically asked us to retrace his steps and let him know where he went wrong in the self-repair process. As per his request, we will do exactly that. We will also fix the device, of course.
Your iPod probably doesn't want to take a dip
- The situation: An Indiana man sent his device in for an iPod repair after the machine sustained some unfortunate water damage.
- What caused it: Just because you love the beach and submerging yourself in water doesn't mean you should subject your iPod to the same treatment. In this case, the man learned a tough lesson in the limits of the iPod's resilience after taking it out into the water – and not just any water, but the salty sea of the ocean – for a full two-minute bath. Admittedly, this submersion was inadvertent on the man's part – so we're thinking he likely had a bathing suit with pockets, into which was stowed the device.
- The solution: Two minutes in the ocean may be what the doctor ordered for you, but it's never a good thing for your iPod. With that amount of time spent in salt water, there is likely significant damage to the logic board, though it will take us opening up the device and ascertaining the repair needs to know the full situation.
Hey battery – why don't you keep a charge?
- The situation: A New York man sent his iPod in because the device's battery had degraded to the point where it could not be used longer than 15 minutes before running out of juice.
- What caused it: This looks to be a case of natural battery deterioration. Over time, all batteries experience little losses in overall efficiency, until one day they can't cut it anymore. Such is the nature of electricity. That said, though, users can do certain things to prolong the life of a battery, including:
- Only charge the device when the battery is running extremely low or flat-out at 0 percent. If you're always charging the battery regardless of its overall power level, the battery will become habituated to constant charges and therefore start losing overall charge.
- Keep the battery – and therefore the device – out of the sun. Excess heat and batteries simply don't mix, and there's few quicker ways to ensure diminished battery life than to plop a device squarely in the middle of a sun beam. In worst case scenarios, such heat exposure has been known to cause batteries to swell, which in turn can jeopardize the rest of the device the battery is powering.
- The solution: This is a clear-cut case for an iPod battery replacement.
A plugging goes wrong
- The situation: A woman sent her device in for an iPod repair because something was stuck in the headphone jack.
- What caused it: The woman had plugged her computer's speaker into her iPod in order to play some tunes at a louder volume. It's something she'd done many times before, yet this time, when removing the speaker, the tip of the cord got stuck inside her iPod. This has been known to happen and can be caused by the speaker tip already being loose or by too much force being applied upon removal of cord. Either way, the woman found herself in quite a predicament, and after some ill-fated attempts at removing the thing via glue and a pen (online repair forums told her that was the way to go) she sent it in to us.
- The solution: We will use the tools in our workshop to easily remove the tip without causing any other damage to the device.