Did your iPhone 6S rear housing paint peel off?

Recently, there are more and more iPhone 6S pictures users with the rear housing getting rusty and the surface paint falling off complaining in many forums, how this happened? Here we have some speculations.

Why this happened?

The reasons are from 2 aspects:

First, as we know that Apple uses the softer full aluminum material since iPhone 5 series in order to pursue a lighter and thinner phone body, which unfortunately causes the phone tending to bend. To solve this problem, Apple adopt the stronger 7000 series aluminum in iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, which makes the 6S features higher hardness. However, here comes the problem, the 7000 series aluminum alloy contains higher percent of Zinc and Magnesium than 6000 series which has been used in 5 and 6 series, which makes its inoxidizability and corrosion resistance weaker than the 6000 series.

Then you may wonder why there still are some iPhone 6S not affected by this phenomenon while lots of others are suffering badly.

The other reason is, we all know that Apple owns lots of contract manufacturers to produce the iPhone/iPad/iMac parts they need, There are absolutely some differences in technological level or treatment process between different contract manufacturers. Speaking of the treatment process, most cellphones including iPhone, use the anodizing treatment to produce the rear housing and we can’t deny the possibility that somehow the there’s a little misoperations in production process or something is wrong with the quality inspections, which can bring the results that metal oxide film (or called oxidized tinct membrane) painted on the rear housing surface is not well-proportioned or strong enough, and then makes it easier to falling off from the surface. In other words, we speculate that there may be something related to the treatment process.

Where’s the most susceptible place

If you’ve encountered this, you may find that happened mostly near the camera, Apple logo, the joint area of the white fringe and metal cover, even with the joint of metal frame and glass edges. These corrosion parts are just like small bugs. What’s worse is that it will not stop till it getting more serious and starting fall off.

How to avoid this problem

The corrosion of the rear housing is not included in the warranty so don’t expect you can get it replaced by Apple.

And according to the above analysis, there is hardly an effective solution to prevent these phenomena, still we need to pay more attention to our 6S, trying to make it away from this tragedy.

1.Try not to use your iPhone 6S under high temperature and moist environment.

2.Better wear a back protective glass film or back cover case to protect your iPhone.

3.Try your best to keep your iPhone clean and dry, do not touch your phone while your hands are wet.

On the other hand, we hope that Apple can strengthen the control of product quality and no more problems like this appears.

Did you pick the right screwdriver to repair iPhone?

Have you ever repaired an iPhone? If you have done this before, you may find that there are so many different size of the iPhone screws. Put all these screws back in the right place should be important when you reassembling the iPhone, cause if you don’t, there will be a big risk damaging your phone. Now we’re going to reveal all the iPhone screws to figure out what exact screwdriver you really need when repairing the iPhone.

1.     Pentalobe screws

First we’ll start from the 2 outer screws at the bottom near the lightning dock connector, these 2 are Pentalobe screws, which is 5-point tamper-resistant screw used first by Apple to secure the battery in the MacBook Pro, there you’ll need a P2 Pentalobe screwdriver, which is 0.8mm size, to undo these 2 screws. Although different iPhone features different length of the Pentalobe screws, still they can share the same P2 Pentalobe screwdriver.

Tips: Many people complained that the Pentalobe screws are prone to stripping even with the right screwdriver, use smaller Phillips screwdriver to put those back will be more convenient compared with using Pentalobe screwdriver.

2.     Standoff screws

What’s more complicated are the inside screws, you may think that all the screws inside are Phillips screws, well, that may not corrected. There are still many special screws inside.

For iPhone 4, except for the Phillips screws, there is a 4.8mm standoff screw inside, near the headphone jack.

While for 4S, there is one more 3.6mm standoff screw along beside the logic board near the battery connector.

For iPhone 5, you can see that there are 3 standoff screws size 2.7mm which securing the logic board to the rear housing, the top one is non-magnetic and the other 2 are on the bottom side near the battery. 

Also the iPhone 5C features 3 standoff screws size 2.7mm. As showed in the following picture

For 5S, there are four 2.8mm standoff screws when you disassemble the logic board.

As for iPhone 6, there is a 2.3mm standoff screw on top right of the battery, while 6 Plus has 2.

Look at new iPhone 6S Plus, unsurprisingly there is still a 2.2mm Phillips standoff screw securing the logic board.

Even with the small size iPhone SE, which also features four 2.8mm standoff screws like 5S did.

Here we can see it clearer from this picture below about the differences between normal Phillips screw and standoff screw.

The standoff screw looks like Phillips screw in some way, however there is a sunken hole within the screw and four flutes on the edges are also different from the normal Phillips screw.

So there you should get a special screwdriver like this one to undo the standoff screw.

Tips: you can undo the standoff screw with a 2.5mm flathead screwdriver if you don’t own a special standoff screwdriver.

And for the iPhone 6S, it is a little bit different, the special screw is located on the top right of the battery, which is 2.5mm Hex standoff screw.

So when you disassemble the iPhone 6S, you’d better prepare the special M2.5 Hex socket screwdriver, otherwise it’s so hard to take out this unique screw.

3.   Phillips screws

Except the special Pentalobe screws and standoff screws, the left are all normal Phillips screws. Though these screws are in different length, luckily they can share the same Phillips screwdriver when you disassemble your iPhone.

However, we’d like to mention that from iPhone 4 series to the 6 generations, the Phillips screws are changed a little bit.

For iPhone 4/4s/5/5C/5SE, you’ll need the Phillips#000 screwdriver while the iPhone 6/6 Plus/6S/6S Plus requiring the Phillips#00screwdriver.

Warm Tips:

When disassemble the screws, keep all of them organized (we suggest to use the magnetic screwmat), cause if you mixed them up, like if the screws get swapped and one of the longer screws is placed in the hole for the shorter it will damage the logic board, causing the phone boot loop, display a blue screen or showing error 14 or error 9 etc. Also over-tighten the screw will damage the phone either.

So if you have any questions or any ideas about how to deal with iPhone screws easier, do not hesitate to share with us!

OnePlus 3 quick tear down review for screen, battery and charging port replacement

Today we’re going to tear down the new flagship killer from OnePlus -- the OnePlus 3, luckily this phone is not that hard to disassemble, which makes it easier for us to repair it when your phone screen got cracked/broken by accident, or when you needed a new battery replacement. Now let’s walk you through a step by step repair guide for the OnePlus 3.

Tools needed：

T2 Torx screwdriver

Phillips screwdriver

Metal opening tool

spudger

Step 1 Power off the phone and remove SIM card tray

The first thing we’re going to do is to power off the phone before any repair work, and by the way take out the SIM card tray.

Here OnePlus 3 Got 2 SIM card slots.

Step 2 Remove rear cover

Undo 2 T2 screws along the bottom of the phone first, similar to iPhone here.

Then you can pry up the rear cover by a metal opening tool or plastic spudger. Take your time, be careful not to scratch the metal rear cover.

After slide along the rear housing cover, you can separate the rear housing and the front screen assembly now.

Take a look at the rear housing, the vibrator is within the rear cover.

Step 3 Remove battery

First undo 1 Phillips screw here and remove the protective bracket cover.

Remove the battery connector.

Next release the 2 extension cable flex connectors.

And there is one little piece of tape along the top of the battery, remove it.

Now it’s time to remove battery, you can pry the battery out from the pull tab of the battery, easy job, battery out. Not like the red battery in oneplus 1 and oneplus 2, the OnePlus 3’s battery is black.

Step 4 Remove charging port module

Undo 7 screws in the charging port module by Phillips screwdriver.

And then we’re going to remove the wire cable, charging port cable and fingerprint sensor ribbon cable.

Now the charging port can pop out, it comes with the headphone jack, loudspeaker and USB type c connector.

Step 5 Remove motherboard

Move to the motherboard, you need to release the wire cable and screen cable first.

Then there are 8 screws remaining here, remove all of them, keep them organized since the screws are not all the same.

Now you can pry out the motherboard or you can just use your fingers to take it out.

On top of the front frame, underneath the mainboard, the ear speaker is standing over there.

On the motherboard, you can try to remove the front-facing camera and the rear camera. Just disconnect their connectors and you can take it off easily.

Left the front screen assembly with frame now. Not like the OnePlus 2 LCD screen, OnePlus 3 is using the AMOLED this time.

Here you can see the front frame is plastic and thin, which adds more difficulties to separate it with the front touch screen.

So, we’d better leave it here if you are not confident with your repair skills.

This is almost the whole tear down work. Next, we’re going to reassemble this phone.

We’ll start with the motherboard here.

Put rear and front facing camera back

After that, the whole motherboard can be pressed down into the frame.

Then we got the screen cable flex connector and wire cable flex connector to reconnect.

And also 8 screws to be fastened, make sure they go into the exact same hole they came out of.

Next step, put charging port module connector back.

Reconnect the wire cable and the other 2 flex cable well.

Also there are 7 screws need to be fastened here.

Next, put battery back

You’d better put the little piece tape back though it’s not that important.

Reconnect the extension flex cable and put back the little metal bracket.

And hold it down with the screw back.

Before install the rear cover, you’d better check whether the screen works well by power on the phone.

If everything is going well, then you can move to the next step.

Put the screen assembly back to the rear cover panel, here you can turn off the phone.

Put the top side in first and pinch down the sides and the bottom. Don’t put too much pressure on it in case you broken the screen.

Now the only thing you need to do is to put these 2 T2 screws at the bottom in place.

Till now everything is going well, so are you ready to do the repair job by you own?

Click here to check the OnePlus 2 teardown repair guide review.

 If you have any questions just leave a comment below to let us know!