3GS Repair Baseband Chip

Ros The Boss

Long story short,

I have a 8GB 3GS with a broken baseband chip, physically broken not jailbreak software issue.

Apple charge €169 for a replacement, new iPhone. but its not really worth is for the 8gb version.

Is there anywhere that solders/fixes hardware etc. for a reasonable amount.

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Short story long:
phone was running 5.0.1, O2 released the imei, to complete the factory unlock the phone had to be restored with iTunes (to 5.1.1) using a foreign sim i.e. meteor.
the restore failed over and over; error (-1).
Phoned apple and eventually they looked at one of the restore log files. told me that the baseband was broken; data could not be written to it.
If I had never updated/restored it the phone would be still working (& locked to O2). The phone had been dropped a few times, rock climbing, but was fine until this. So there it is a bricked iphone.

I'm comfortable with soldering to a certain extent but not on this scale.
the chip costs about €15 but does anywhere do this kind of work and not for crazy prices?

cheers,
Ros

CathalDublin

someone who offers a reball service for consoles should be able to do that for you.

Out of interest have you tried removing the battery for 30minutes and trying a restore?
I've managed to fix tonnes of iphones with corrupt basebands which failed to restore using this method

Ros The Boss

CathalDublin wrote: »

someone who offers a reball service for consoles should be able to do that for you.

Out of interest have you tried removing the battery for 30minutes and trying a restore?
I've managed to fix tonnes of iphones with corrupt basebands which failed to restore using this method

I'll give the battery removal a go. Not much hope though after what the apple senior techie said. But that was based on a log file not an actual inspection.

Otherwise is there somewhere you or anyone else would recommend for such reballing/soldering?

Cheers

Tom Dunne

How do you know it is physically damaged?

These things have no moving parts, so aside from dropping it, or physically poking it, it seems odd that it is physically damaged.

guil

I assume the op means the solder is damaged going on what apple told them. Could be as simple as what Cathal suggested though

Ros The Boss

Tom Dunne wrote: »

How do you know it is physically damaged?

These things have no moving parts, so aside from dropping it, or physically poking it, it seems odd that it is physically damaged.

Hi, you might not have read it above; it fell a couple of times rock climbing. I am assuming the physical damage since it was working fine prior to restore. And there was no dodgy software on the phone. The screen was badly smashed but working. I replaced that and all was well until the itunes restore, to unlock the phone officially.

The chip looks fine, maybe it has poor contact with the board etc. Unfortunatly it is a lot of maybes, dammage from dropping it one too many times is only a theory.

In any event i have confidence replacing the chip would solve everything. But not worth €169 from apple.

Cheers

pocgoc

Hi mate,
I offer reball and reflow service, I'm importing the required chips to fix an 3gs with a similar problem with the baseband. If successful i could offer the same service to you.

Ros The Boss

pocgoc wrote: »

Hi mate,
I offer reball and reflow service, I'm importing the required chips to fix an 3gs with a similar problem with the baseband. If successful i could offer the same service to you.

Yes i would be interested, just touch base when your happy with it working and how much it would cost.

Cheers to all the replies.
Ros

bennyg123ben

hi i have a iphone 3gs 16gb which i bought off ebay it needs a new baseband chip as it is a week 42 2009 new bootrom is there any fix