iPhone 6 Backlight Repairs
Recently at Wires Computing, we had an iPhone 6 come into the shop that had been wet. The customer tried the rice repair method that has been disproven many times.
After 12 hrs the phone seemed to turn on due to the vibration as well as the calls and texts the phone received. Regardless of what the internet tells you, the rice method will never work and if it does then it's purely by coincidence. Here is why: when the phone gets wet, all of the surface mount devices (SMD) come into contact with the liquid and short out from the impurities in the water. The contact with water leaves corrosion and this typically causes the SMD components to burn and/or fail.
The iPhone 6 that we had showed signs of life but no display. After replacing the screen with a new one, it still showed no signs of an image. When inspecting the screen in front of a flashlight, a faint image was visible. This confirmed that the phone was on and in fact worked, but had a blown back light. For this type of repair it would require micro soldering. After checking the filters on the motherboard we found them to have continuity and functioned within specifications. At this point in the back light circuit we still had a back light display BGA IC (ball grid array integrated circuit) as well as a coil and a diode. After checking the coil, which was also found to be within specifications, we then looked to the diode. Below is the picture of the diode under the cpu heatsink.
![](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d10389693dd10000186ccb4/t/5d1039ce51419200014a6569/1470802818497/1000w/5622.jpg)
Finally we had the smoking gun. We located the source of the problem: the backlight diode. The diode was very corroded which resulted in one of the pins to be broken from the current that had gone through the circuit while liquid was in the device.
![](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d10389693dd10000186ccb4/t/5d1039ce51419200014a656b/1483588133018/1000w/P1020105.jpg)
After spending some time replacing the burned diode we were ready to try and power on the device to see if the backlight circuit would work correctly.
![](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d10389693dd10000186ccb4/t/5d1039ce51419200014a656d/1483589854607/1000w/backlight.jpg)
Success! After replacing the burned diode the backlight circuit was finally functional again. This repair only took two business days, we were able to retain all the data on the customer's device, and the customer was very happy to have the device fully functional again.
If you have gotten your phone wet and are in need of liquid damage repairs or micro soldering services be sure to contact us today!
We do accept mail in repairs if you are not local to our repair shop.