My experience fixing my iPhone 4s

Apple iPhones are not perfect but I do like them. 4 members of my family have had the infamous Wifi problem on the iPhone 4s, and any iPhone 4s user knows that the batteries eventually diminish until they no longer hold a decent charge. I researched reviews inside and outside Amazon, for battery suppliers, and viewed many Youtube videos on fixing the Wifi issue. There seem to be many suppliers of batteries, almost all of whom get many terrible reviews for supplying very substandard product.

I eventually came across a company registered in Europe (Netherlands) who had mostly favourable reviews from what seemed like genuine consumers, and who also specialised mainly in battery replacement, and who gave a 12 month guarantee on their batteries. Their prices were on the higher end but at about half the price of those supplied by Apple
BatteryChampion.com - www batterychampion com I paid about 24 euro each for 2 batteries, and opted for free post. The battery spec was for a marginally greater capacity than the original 4S battery. The batteries took over 2 weeks to arrive, but I was ok with that. They came with a 5 star, crosshead, and splurgier, which are ok for battery replacement only.

I bought some relatively cheap tools from eTrader so I could have a slightly better set for fixing the Wifi issue. My symptoms on the Wifi issue were:- Wifi on/off button greyed out, Turning on Bluetooth gave a continually spinning wheel, in General,About, one cannot see the mac address of the Wifi chip, the phone became erratically non-responsive to touch screen commands, the battery seemed to die more quickly. I lived with this state of affairs for the last six months, and through the last 3 versions of IOS. Last week I upgraded to IOS 8.1 through a download through my iMac/iTunes. Yesterday I fixed the Wifi/Bluetooth, responsiveness, and replaced the Batteries, in both my phone and that of my wife. So far so good. Now I will tell you what I tried, and what did and did not work.

I first of all tried the "powered off" 10 minute freezer trick, making sure to put phone in a sealed bag, with all the air out of it. I let the phone warm up for a few minutes then powered phone on. The phone showed that the Mac address and the wifi button were present, but when was turned on it failed to see my wifi network nor those of my neighbours. So my conclusion was that the chip (same one for both bluetooth and wifi) was functional, but there probably was an issue with the solder connections, which had deteriorated through running through repeated high and low temperatures. After 30 minutes the phone returned to its totally non-functional wifi/bluetooth state.

I decided that I needed to make the wifi/bluetooth chip pretty hot, to remelt and reset the solder joints, but I felt that I did not want to put the rest of the circuitry in jeopardy by heating them also, so I rejected the approach of blowing very hot air from a blowdryer in through the speaker apertures while the phone was assembled and powered on. I found 2 good video's on YouTube, one in Russian, but great for camera focus and step by step disassembly, and the other in Spanish for a still step through key steps
Secure http: www youtube com/watch?v=bf4n8yQzAb4 (new to Boards cannot do URL's)
Secure http: www youtube com/watch?v=GWvgKxKPgyw

Two additional things that I did was (a) to protect the rest of the circuitry by wrapping a paper towel around all but the Wifi/Bluetooth chip, (b) taking the black tape off the top surface for the ceramic chip, before using my wife's hair dryer on full heat, both sides of the chip, until the chip was almost untouchable by finger. I reassembled and all is working fine, now. I will post an update to this article in 3 months assuming all has been well since.

One last piece of advice....Do upgrade to IOS 8.1 as Apple seem to have incorporated something that may help with heating and the Wifi chip. I noticed since our wifi's are working normally, and the iPhone goes into standby (which it is for the large majority of the time) IOS switches off the Wifi, and the data connection becomes 3G..makes sense!

BTW From what I read the iPhone 5C, and S they have the same issues

I hope this helps someone out there...as 200+ euro is a hefty price for a refurbished 4S from Apple, for what I believe is truly a production design issue that has hit what I believe to be the majority of iPhone 4, and in future 5 users.

Good luck Billy