microscopic soldering

here is a view of some circuits and connector of an iphone 4s motherboard with my digital microscope. i’m inspecting some work i just got back from a new vendor.

a really awesome job of soldering and re-routing of the motherboard on a microscopic level.  to really understand the small size, i really wish i had taken the photo with something to scale, but i would say the solder bridges you see were each the size of a grain of salt!

this is not a normal mr. fxr repair.  just something as a last resort to get the phone back up and running.

this repair totally knocked off existing (burnt) ic’s and then re-routed the circuit to bypass and reconnect!  an amazing repair!  (if it works!)  really pretty interesting procedure, especially considering the amount of concentration and skill this required to work on something so small.

anyway, the phone is running like a clock.  all is well and the customer is elated.  the phone had received water damage and combined with trying to restart the phone while wet not only knocked out an external component (which is replaceable), it also knocked out several circuits on the motherboard.  ugh!  and it’s not like you can easily replace the motherboard.  motherboards are not supplied as a replacement part.  either you have to get another from some other phone, try to fix it (finger’s crossed) or trash it.  in this case, we got lucky and learned something in the process.