No signal, was giving error -1
Hi,
I got an iPhone 5C off eBay advertised as faulty, as it wouldn't restore (error -1) and it has a cracked screen in the bottom right corner.
I am gonna replace the screen.
I had problems getting it to restore as it was giving this error -1 to me as well. I was getting desperate and reading up on it I thought to try heating the back of the iPhone with a hairdryer. I was surprised but I managed to get it to restore with iTunes after many unsuccessful attempts.
I then had the problem that it wouldn't activate as it was stuck on searching for signal. Again, I tried heating the back of the iPhone, especially above the area where the sim card tray is, and I got a signal.
Ok, so now it is somewhat functional (screen needs replacing though as it is all fuzzy etc.) but after cooling down it went back to forever searching for a signal. I tried again today to heat up the back of the phone for a while and signal came back for a little while.
From what I read, this is a fault with the baseband chip (when the phone is stuck on searching for signal, I can't see any IMEI and so on). Heating up this chip looks like the solution as my experiments with the hairdryer did work briefly.
Bearing in mind I don't have any soldering experience whatsoever, I would like to purchase a soldering iron and try and apply some heat to this chip and see if it fixes the issue for good. Could I have any tips on how to perform this?