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Repair information and guides for the iPhone 6S Plus that was released on September 25, 2015. Model A1687, A1634

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Water damage, repaired, new issues arose.

On Tuesday I had someone ask about his iPhone 6S Plus which had a nonfunctional ear speaker. (Speakerphone and mic worked, just no ear speaker.) He claimed it stopped working when it got wet. He needed his phone that day so he didn't give it to me then, but today he returned. Not only was the speaker dead, but now his screen was also dead -- heavily distorted, shifted to the side, wacky digitizer. I replaced the screen and the ear speaker; I've done this many times before without incident.

Upon reassembly the screen works fine but the ear speaker still doesn't work, and now a new problem manifested: the back of the phone (the upper part) gets pretty hot, and the battery drains INSANELY quickly -- like from 50% to zero in the space of fifteen minutes. I watched the percentage count down step by step. The Lightning port seems to work properly; it knows when it's plugged in and there's power/data to/from the phone, no problem.

Anything I can do to address this?

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Did you properly decontaminate the logic board prior to swapping the screen and ear speaker? On water damaged devices, this must be done otherwise you will probably have all kinds of latent issues pop up down the road.

Now you probably have a logic board damaged cause by water. You will need to remove the logic board, remove the shields and at the very least clean off the corrosion with 99% IPA. Ideally, this board needs to go in an ultrasonic cleaner with Branson EC cleaner. Once that is done. you will have to replace any damaged or corroded components and troubleshoot the device.

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The only visible corrosion was around the home button. Before I moved that assembly to the new screen I thoroughly cleaned it in 99% IPA. I did a pretty thorough inspection of the motherboard and other components under magnification and found nothing consequential, just your typical bits of dust and lint which I removed.

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Fair enough...my comments are also meant to help others who my find this question in the future. Did you remove the shields when you inspected the logic board? You clearly have a short somewhere...

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I did not remove the shields. Looks like that'll be my next step.

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Yeah, as a best practice, you really should remove the shields. I have one now on the bench. It looked pretty good, just C5202 corroded. I removed the back shields and everything looked okay. The front side looked clean but I removed them and sure enough, corrosion and signs of arcing. You just never really know until you look.

It's like Schrodinger's Cat...but with corrosion. The phone can be in two states simultaneously but the quantum field collapses when you take a look ;>).

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Hi,

You can't really "repair" liquid damaged devices, or should I say, you shouldn't try repair it for the sake of the device.

Liquid damage is very unpredictable, and as you have seen, can cause further issues later in the devices lifespan.

Liquid damage cleaning should be done mainly for data recovery, if the device works after, it's a bonus.

You should have taken the logic board out, desolder the shields, and then stick the board in an ultrasonic cleaner, after this, you then should put it in a tub of isopropyl alcohol, once dried, you can then look for any bad caps on the logic board, or bad connectors, and try replace them if you have sufficient soldering experience.

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Steve will be eternally grateful.
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