We recently received a white Apple iPhone 4S for Verizon from Champaign, Illinois. The owner of the device shared with us that the phone had been dropped, cracking the screen. However, before turning to iResQ's repair services, the owner attempted to fix the device himself first using an online tutorial.
He was only able to get about halfway through the repair before deciding not to continue because he was not completely confident in the tutorial he was using. He reconstructed the iPhone and then realized that the Wi-Fi and camera were no longer working fully. One of the device's internal screws also went missing during the at-home repair attempt, and the owner pointed out that one of the remaining screws was stripped, with a piece of the phone near the stripped screw at the upper right hand corner of the phone broken off entirely.
Unfortunately, this type of scenario is one we see far too often due to the proliferation of websites and YouTube videos of self-repair tutorials. While electronics repair professionals will be able to easily and successfully take the self-repair route, this is not the case for the majority of people attempting to do so.
When we received the device, we quickly observed that the iPhone's owner had caused significant additional damage during his self-repair attempt. We discovered that the camera component had been broken off of the logic board, which explained why the camera had stopped functioning. However, this damage also ruined the logic board. Since the logic board also is charged with controlling the device's Wi-Fi access, the symptoms were far worse than simply a non-functioning camera. In addition, the missing screw and stripped screw that the customer described were very problematic issues.
Self-repair turned a small problem into a big problem
This scenario demonstrates how a small and easily fixed problem like the original broken screen can be transformed into a huge headache when self-repair is attempted. The customer told us that he had paid $94.95 for the part he had purchased online to perform the repair himself and paid an additional $30 for overnight shipping. Our iPhone repair services include the phone part and the installation service for $89 currently. We also provide overnight shipping to and from our repair facility via a prepaid overnight UPS label for a total price of $22. This means that the customer spent $13 more by attempting self-repair than he would have if he originally consulted iResQ. Plus, he essentially ruined his phone's other features in the process.
So what lesson can be learned from this? Don't try this at home! We were able to perform an iPhone repair, replacing the broken screen with one of our top-quality screens and repairing the logic board to get the phone back to working order.