Live reactions watching this video:
Remove two screws from the bottom of the phone – easy, I can totally do this!
Soften the glue and pull out the back – hmm, I guess it's doable if I can find replacement glue.
Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together.
Peel off protective foam from motherboard – is it even possible to replace this stuff?
CNC grind the existing 128GB NAND to dust – I should probably stop watching now...
I was also blown away at CNC grinding step. Perhaps he did it because heat gun would have impacted other parts of the PCB. With grinding the impact was limited to Nand chip only. He eventually had to use heat to cleanup the residue.
> Perhaps he did it because heat gun would have impacted other parts of the PCB
Most of all the components on the other side of the PCB.
Even if the NAND was not additionally covered in resin, due to the large amount of contacts (and probably large amount of grounded pins, which dissipate heat faster), alot of heat would be needed. More than the smaller components underneath need to just fall off then...
The components underneath shouldn't fall off. The surface tension of the solder should be enough to keep them in place. (That's how it's generally possible to reflow solder components to two sides of a board.)
Of course, reflowing the components in an ad-hoc way is quite likely to cause other problems, so it's probably still a good idea to avoid it.
It's more so the 128GB package is not worth that much, so it's easier to just delete it.
You also need to be pretty precise with attaching the phone in an exact position, and grinding things with a very low margin of error, say, 0.05 mm along the vertical axis, in order to remove the chip but leave the PCB intact. Not for the faint of the heart.
I suppose they have had several training rounds using badly broken phones first.
That's trivial for a machinist to check before starting the milling operation though.
> I suppose they have had several training rounds using badly broken phones first.
Can't be very many of those yet. The iPhone 16 only became available for sale last Friday.
Obviously he meant other broken phones, like older models or other brands entirely
With only hot air you would need a lot of heat and pulling, potentially displacing other parts nearby, because it seems like the nand flash is not just soldered, but additionally glued with some kind of adhesive.
Fwiw, you can get a desktop CNC for a few hundred dollars (I mean they're very similar to 3d printers in design). You can get pretty good ones for under $5k.
But yeah, getting that chip off with just heat looks pretty hard without affecting anything else. I'd still want a heat sink to pull away heat from other parts but I'm not at this skill level and overly cautious. But this does look doable.
And since it's HN, I do encourage everyone to give more repair a go. Things like micro soldering are easier than you think. And remember than your phones can be turned into servers (raspberry pi? How about my old nexus?). Though I'd love to hear if people know how to do this stuff on iPhones because I plan on switching over. I guess no more bash scripting for automatic backup of all my photos and stuff to my server :'( someone please tell me there's a way )':
> Though I'd love to hear if people know how to do this stuff on iPhones
Very little in the realm of "server" or "raspberry pi alternative" could be done with modern iPhones despite even a 2-year old iphone being OP in terms of hardware for most home server tasks. They really work hard to prevent any use besides what's officially blessed by Tim Apple himself. Whether that's "for your own good" or not is a matter of opinion, I happen to think it's lame but don't want to debate it.
Can you still install Linux on them? That seems like what OP is actually looking for.
I'm not too worried about old iPhones since by then it's pretty likely to be jail broken and no issues there. I mean even if I brick it (and somehow can't recover; so, very unlikely) it was going to be e-waste anyways, right? As far as recycling goes, turning your old phone into a server is a big win.
But I'm more interested in being able to use my current bash scripts that run on my Pixel. Backup is really the only important one since I can connect to my computers from anywhere to do anything else
Some of us do do this stuff with iPhones, and it’s do-able, sort of - TrollStore (available up to iOS 17.0 currently) + NewTerm/bootstrap gives you a native CLI, add Filza in there and you can do almost whatever you need (with some manual work). I must admit, it’s much easier/potentially more functional on iOS 16 and earlier, but what can you do…
Alternatively there is iSH or a-Shell.
I've been playing with iSH and aShell on my iPad. I'm not particularly happy with them and there seems to be a big lack of documentation (e.g. the `mount -t ios idintmatter dest` was quite odd and I think surprising to anyone that's terminally terminal)
Idk if I'll feel comfortable jailbreaking a new 16, but yeah apple is fucking weird.
==== Apple engineers, I know you're here ====
- Airport
Deprecated.
- networksetup
Not associated with AirPort network
- wdutil
Not only requires sudo, but you redact the SSID. To a root user‽‽‽
- ioreg -ln Airport driver | perl -lne 'print $1 if $_ =~ /IO80211SSID.*"(.*)"/;'
Redacted
- system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | awk '/Current Network/ {getline;$1=$1;print $0 | "tr -d ':'";exit}'
Takes 10 seconds to run but at least it fucking works and doesn't require sudo!
What
The
ᵃⁿᵈ ⁱ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵐᵉᵃⁿ ᵗʰⁱˢ ˡⁱᵍʰᵗˡʸ
FUCK
‽‽‽
Try `ipconfig getsummary en0`. It's instant on my machine and dumps plenty of info about the current state of the connection, including the SSID and BSSID.
Split horizon DNS can help you solve this for all services, not just ssh, and not be at the whims of Apple.
Thanks, I didn't know any this. I'll look into it more.
But I'm still just confused by the decisions being made over at Apple. I understand hand holding those who don't know much but they do realize that the reason their device is so common among engineers is because it's not too dissimilar from Linux, right? Why attack power users? What's being gained? That's what I don't get.
> And remember than your phones can be turned into servers
I wouldn't turn a cell phone into a server without also disabling the wireless chipsets somehow. Knowing that some unknown number of people working for your phone manufacturer, your wireless carrier, and Google or Apple have privileged access, including the the ability to remote into your phone at any time and add/delete/modify files and install software, without any notice or even indication to you that something has been done isn't the kind of security/privacy I'd want on a server.
I believe that this is actually possible, but I'm curious if there is there any hard evidence that it has ever been done?
It happens all the time on the OS/carrier/manufacturer side. I've personally seen settings reverted, software installed without notice, etc. It's a lot harder to say what any random cell tower in range is able to do but the chipsets are closed source and have their own OS.
Manufacturers and carriers have had it in their terms of service that they can do it.
Here's what tmobile had in their ToS:
We may remotely change software, systems, applications, features or programming on your Device without notice. These changes will modify your Device and may affect or erase data you have stored on your Device, the way you have programmed your Device, or the way you use your Device. You will not be able to use your Device during the installation of the changes, even for emergencies.
While technically it would be a CNC machine, desktop CNC are really just routers, and for most of them even soft materials like aluminium push them, requiring crazy spindle speeds for the tiny endmills they can handle due to the limited stiffness. And those high speeds create horrible fine metal dust
Yes you can but operating one CNC without major snafus takes some practice and selecting the proper bit and speeds for such a delicate operation isn't exactly easy. It is actually very easy to puncture the iPhone through and through.
Meh, I replaced the battery in a 1st gen (2016) iphone SE, per the ifixit instructions. The home pushbutton didn't work afterwards. Repeated disassembly and reassembly didn't help. No useful advice on ifixit forum. Unclear what if anything to try next. Luckily the phone was long obsolete by then, so replaced. Repairability of these things sucks and I miss swappable batteries.
> Repairability of these things sucks and I miss swappable batteries.
They become mandatory in the EU after 2027 so I expect them to make a strong comeback at some point.
> Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together
We didn’t invent writing, drawing, and photographing for nothing.
1. Have small storage boxes numbered 1 through 1000.
2. Before and after detaching anything, take photos (multiple, if needed)
3. Draw arrow/circle/… indicators on the photos to help you remember what to look at.
4. Whatever comes loose, put it in the next labeled box.
5. Take a photo of the filled box and the tool(s) you used to detach that part.
6. When putting things back together, work backwards through your photos.
we live in the future, just start recording video of everything. You probably have an old cellphone you could use, and you'll wish you had more angles if you do end up being to go back into the footage for something
I think that would make it a multi-person job. Keeping the relevant part in focus while you’re manipulating the device distracts from figuring out what to do next.
I don't think a GoPro can focus close enough to take detailed enough pictures of tiny components like these.
okay, edited to say old cellphone
I wouldn't have thought to do it, but after seeing it, i think I could do this on a Bridgeport. I'm only so-so at machining, but I can make a Bridgeport grind with great precision in a rectangle!
I was actually thinking the same thing; a maintained milling machine can easily grind at those tolerances. Get your Z level be the most important so you don't cut too deep into the solder pads.
The being said, I'm wondering if he used something like a cheap SainSmart CNC... sounded like a dentist drill
Even so, the solder pads are surely at least like 0.05 to 0.1mm thick, across the size of the 2cm chip that shouldn't be hard at all to get level enough
> Disconnect dozens of cables and parts – wow, it's going to be hard to remember how everything goes back together.
It's not going to be hard. You won't even need to note where everything goes. The sizes of the cables/parts are different and as a result you'll be able to match them up.
CNC grinding part is so wild, it took my several replay to understand what is that
> CNC grind the existing 128GB NAND to dust – I should probably stop watching now...
Ah yes, Apple, the king of repairability!
there should be an audio socket hidden somewhere, you can open it by drilling a hole.... (old joke)
Inb4 someone does it on a 4jaw chuck in a lathe
If you visit cities in China that are heavily invested in the electronics industry you could buy a cheaper iPhone 16 pro with 128GB and upgrade it to 1TB.
But if you do that regularly, you probably have the money to buy the 1TB version outright.
make a friend there or friends with a booth worker and just ship it there talk over wechat shipping cost quite low
Putting aside all the business model stuff, man, Apple makes some seriously pretty hardware. The packing, the cables and connectors, the wrapped motherboard - the whole thing is gorgeous.
I feel like most phones have pretty clean internals these days. Apple goes the extra aesthetic mile to make everything same shade of grey/metal/black.
The design of the iPhone has always fascinated me. It's just so... clean.
I think it was Steve Jobs who insisted that that even the inside of their products look as clean as the outside. It unfortunately means it's a pain to disassemble, but they certainly do look pretty.
I don't think it's about showing off. It's about reliability, mechanical sturdiness, compactness, the ability to cleanly assemble the device an test it on every significant step before sealing. You can't help but end up with a neat thing to meet all these requirements.
When I go to replace wear items such as the battery the insides of my Apple products look like goopy garbage because of all the adhesive I have to melt and scrape through.
How is that considered “gorgeous”?
Eventually people wanted to be able to use it in somewhat moderate rain or want it to survive being accidentally dropped in the pool.
What about the dozens (at this point hundreds) of phone models that are both rainproof and have a replaceable battery without melting and scraping? They exist in real, observed reality.
What about the last 15 years of MacBook models that never claimed to be waterproof but still require heat guns and risk of catastrophic immolation to extend their life beyond 3-5 years?
But for some reason the internals of an iPhone 16 are still “gorgeous”…and merit a stage appearance and endorsement from Mother Earth herself!
in my experience from a few years ago: I commute by bicycle to shool (and in the meantime work) in a very rainy country. My entire childhood, I had to replace phones every few months jsut because they got soaked in the rain and I didn't close the protective case perfectly or whatever.
Then I started to buy waterproof phones, and my life was noticeably better. those still die from water damage, just slower. Every time you drop the phone and the case pops off, the water protection gets a bit worse, and after a year or so, the rubber gets hard, especially in winter, and its no longer waterproof. I wouldn't dare to put it in actual water.
Now I have had my smartphone for many years, and I had the previous one for many years. So yes please, glue it together, glue it shut, at least if you're serious about water damage and dust ingress
> What about the dozens (at this point hundreds) of phone models that are both rainproof and have a replaceable battery
If that's what you are looking for just get one. It may come even with spyware preinstalled. Then try it underwater, should be fine if it's in specs, right?
I just switched from Android for security primarily. The rest is a bonus. The problem is smartphone becomes a single point of failure. If it gets stolen I can't even work without authentication apps.
Your post doesn't make sense.
A commenter complains that Apple uses a lot of adhesive inside their phones so they are not really a thing of beauty. Someone replies that it's because of water proofing. Another person points out that, no, actually plenty of companies make waterproof phones without using glue so Apple could. You tell them to go buy other another phone.
How is it in any way related to beautiful design, waterproofing and glue use in manufacturing?
Sealing electrical stuff from water is literally 19th century tech. Plenty of underwater flashlights exist even today. If they just lose the obsession with thinness in phones, almost every other problem becomes trivial to solve. Instead they make the ultra thin, breakable phone, and then users put it in a protective case which eliminates the thinness anyway.
Thin phones are good. This is a thing you carry around in your pocket all day, you’ll notice almost every millilitre thicker and gram heavier it gets.
But don't people use phone cases anyway to protect these fragile devices? what's the point then?
This has the parts of my brain wired for:
- working on cars (the torque "wrench" click is such a cue)
- dissembling electronics
- watching folks work on... mechanical watches
- unnecessary / creative uses for a CNC
On a more constructive topic: Can the performance/endurance characteristics be modified by using better nand chips(a la ram)? Or does it have to an Apple blessed part?
NAND only gets faster by having more of it in parallel.
If you are okay with losing your operating system each time the phone turns off...
Did you think that comment was suggesting replacing NAND with DRAM? I'm pretty sure it's just asking if there are varying speed grades of NAND the way there are varying speed grades of DRAM.
M539/TronicsFix/Wristwatch Revival...
If you find this interesting you might also like repairing graphics cards and with that I mean stuff like fixing traces on the inner layers of the board. I just picked the first search result [1], not sure if that one is especially interesting or not.
Are there any manufacturers/standards that both pair parts to your phone (to make theft not worthwhile) but also allow authenticated unpairing of parts to your phone (to allow part reuse)? I am conflicted in that I like the idea of right to repair but I also like that locking things down helps fight phone theft.
I imagine that something like this ought to be feasible:
- the phone comes with a secret key baked into it
- upon installation of parts, some secret generated from that key is baked into some secret enclave in the part to “pair” the part with your device so it can’t be harvested
- the OS a provides a function to “unpair” a part with your phone that requires use of the secret key, so you can reuse that part elsewhere
- parts are sold “unpaired” and therefore can be used with any phone (maybe via some open protocol to allow many manufacturers to provide parts, not just the OEM)
The technical skill of the modder is unreal.
That said, imagine that is Israeli security service removing and replacing the nand storage.
EDIT TO ADD: Pointing out how a determined state-level attacker could pin-point a single individual.
Supply chain attacks to computers have been documented in various countries. I don't think attacking the iPhone's NAND is practical, though, as it would also need to somehow bypass the signature verification system of the CPU, and even then everything on the chip would be encrypted before it hits the flash.
It's possible that there are bootloader exploits, but fortunately you can't beat these devices as easily as you can on PC.
Reality sadly goes much further than your imagination.
Dumping without desoldering, reflashing in place, generally speaking if you think it's theorically possible, someone probably have tried. If they have your device, you have already lost.
> removing and replacing the nand storage.
But... with this kind of removal, what would these government agents gain besides a free blank phone?
We know, from multiple leaks, that clandestine services from multiple countries, including the US and China, have supply chain attacks, where they intercept computing equipment and install hardware backdoors into it.
Intercept an iPhone, replace the 128GB storage with a 128GB storage and some extra rootkit. Or anything else really.
If you can bypass Apple's secure boot, you probably don't need to do a complete swap of the physical storage medium to get that rootkit installed.
Replace it in the box with hardware-level malware installed.
Why pin point a single individual? They can just boobie trap a whole shipment of iPhones and let them hit the markets. Terror's a numbers game! /s
I just don't understand why people would want to keep supporting a company that is actively holding customers back in countless ways.
Because i really dont want anything to do with google and there is really only 2 choices.
it works better than the offerings from competition, and Apple isn't beholden to China.
The competition doesn't provide a product package that is superior for everyone's use case, so Apple users balance the trade-offs and decide they prefer Apple's products even with its caveats?
It's not like Pixel + Android, Samsung + Android, etc. produce objectively better products in every way.
Is there a hardware restraint for why he chose just 1TB?
I'm seeing 2TB/4TB/8TB Nand Flash being sold online (the latter for a hefty ~$650). Is there anything stopping me from paying a professional like this to install an 8TB unit?
edit: I see those NAND flash models are supported by Macbooks. Perhaps I am mistaken in thinking an iPhone could support it.
Could you provide a link to 4TB in a single chip though? 2TB chips started appearing only this summer...
Just watched this at 2x speed and the precision/stability of the hands is remarkable, especially when extracting the tiny foam gaskets.
Seriously, made me think he was on beta-blockers or something to be so smooth. (insinuating PEDs were used for iPhone modding- we're through the looking glass here people. :P)
Nah. It makes total sense that he was on Phone Enhancing Drugs.
How do people watch videos at 2x speed? I don't know if it's just me but I can only do it for a couple of minutes before I stop following along.
Usually, if a video is too slow I find it frustrating and I'm more likely to stop watching or increase the speed.
It's not like I'm actually following along with a screwdriver and iPhone so I don't need to watch it at 1x speed.
2x is slow, 4x keeps you on your toes.
It’s still impressive at 1x.
I wonder what happens if you increase the storage beyond what is offered by Apple in one of the models. Will it just work as normal with 2TB/4TB/8TB? Or will the OS realize that something funky is going on and try to restrict it?
Storage controller for the NAND is on the SoC so it only works for specific configurations of NAND. Assuming it followed the pattern of the M series Mac’s.
Seen this before with other models. 1 TiB is a factory option, so it's not like the days when Asian market hacks gave 4x or 8x what was available.
There's also that video of a guy adding a headphone jack in a similar fashion. I was impressed that he found the internal room for it.
I never understood why this was always seen as such a constraint. It’s three (or four) pins! It doesn’t even have to have the “hole” form factor. You could have them all in a straight line and then place a headphone jack AGAINST them. I always thought a magnetic TRRS set of pins along the side of a phone could work. Add a sleeve to the connector’s side too. Heck you could standardize a flattened TRRS or whatever that would still slip readily into a typical jack.
That was on the iPhone 7. Its internals really look like the decision to omit the headphone jack was made pretty late in the development cycle, so they replaced it with a useless piece of plastic.
Possibly Strange Parts: https://www.strangeparts.com/bringing-back-the-iphone-headph...
Is this economically viable or just a show-off? Because considering the skilled labour and equipment, I’m not sure it’d be much cheaper than the $500 upgrade.
It's not economically viable because the NANDs come from donor systems. Apple prevents the NAND oem from selling to anyone but them. It's part of their anti right to repair strategy.
I don't have an answer but you can upgrade your existing phone you already bought using that method/service. Otherwise cost of official "upgrade" is $500 and a new iphone
I started watching this and as someone else commented, yeah, things looked doable at the start and then got progressively more impressive and insane. It's clear they know what they're doing. From the extremely intricate tools for each and every specific step, to the screwdriver that tightens only the exact amount when putting things back together, to - what! - CNC milling off an entire component?! I was so impressed. Surely their day job must be in some way related to assembling this phone?
Wow it's almost like they should put an... sd card slot.
What a heretical idea. Surely all storage should be soldered down to the logic board, for security.
For watertightness, more accurately.
What about the dozens of phone models that have SD slots and waterproof ratings? Please don’t unquestioningly regurgitate propaganda.
What are some examples of phones with SD card slots and similar waterproof ratings? A quick google search didnt turn up much
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5-6033.php
Samsung Galaxy S5 from 2014. Headphone jack, SD card slot, and swappable battery. IP67 water resistant. Almost everything since then has been a regression.
You can get a Nikonos V underwater film camera around $300 on ebay these days too. Designed by Jacques Cousteau in the 1960s, can shoot under 150+ feet of water, and is supposedly a good all-around rugged outdoor camera as well. I'd sort of want one but I haven't used any of my film camera gear in years.
>After every charge and boot sequence, the [Galaxy S5] reminds the user to preserve the IP67 rating by securing the back cover and making sure the USB flap is closed.
Nobody wants to faff around with this stuff just in case today's going to be the day that they drop their phone in a puddle.
No doubt, but we're 10 years on, if we'd carried on down the path of swappable storage we'd probably also have solved these minor ux things - no USB flaps on modern waterproof phones f.ex
MicroSD cards go into the same slot the SIM cards go into. Unless Apple stopped taking SIM cards, there's going to be a bit that takes a sliver of plastic and metal. Clearly, Apple has already solved this problem, they just choose not to add the design complexity (and frankly, damage to their popcorn pricing model) of a microSD slot.
They're in the same tray as the SIM card, you don't see people crying for esims because of waterproofing. And a simple gasket around the port is enough for the IP68 or whatever kind of rating the iphones and co have nowadays
Over 500 results here https://geizhals.de/?cat=umtsover&pg=1&v=e&hloc=at&hloc=de&s...
Wow, slow down there Charlie.
Save some innovation for the iPhone 16 AI max plus.
I'm astonished that it works! To my understanding, the 128GB has specifications for how to "talk" to it on its datasheet and same with the 1TB. Do they have the same manufacturer for them to have the same pinout?
And, how come they're the same size lol. Intuitively, I'd expect the 1TB to be way bigger.
1TB storage comes from another donor iPhone apparently so it makes sense it just fits and works. I guess Apple didn't think of matching them to specific motherboards so you can still reuse them
Generally most memory uses standardized physical/electrical/firmware interfaces from JEDEC, an industry consortium. I do not know for certain if the iPhone memory is standard.
Mobile RAM/Flash packages are usually made in larger capacities by stacking several dies within a package. This can involve die thinning - grinding the dies thinner so they fit within the same space after stacking.
In part 2 he reassembles the 128MB memory chip dust and solders it in a 32MB iPhone.
Shame that the existing NAND has to be turned to dust. Gone are the days of upgradable hardware.
It really is a shame no one has ever successfully added some form of small scale extendable storage to a phone that Apple could have copied so they are entirely forced to upsell you a phone 500$ more expensive so you can get extended storage at a five fold markup. Surely, if it was the case, customers would never stand being taken for such fools and would do something. /s
On a more serious tone, I hate Apple for the way they do their products segmentation. It's for me the best proof that the market is not competitive enough. Multiple screen support forcing you on the pro line, decently sized storage requiring you fork 500$, the stuborn refusal to allow tablet users a proper interface to not canibalize the laptop sales, it's outrageous what Apple can get away with. Not that their main competitors are shaking the boat much mind you. Oligopolies are awful.
At least, you can now record video directly to a usb-c connected hard drive but only in ProRes and no luck for photos (because f*** you that's why).
Any ideas how much that 1TB NAND chip costs? Significantly less than Apples $500 premium for the 1TB SKU I'm sure, but how much less exactly?
A single 8Tbit NAND is about $130 in single quantities.
Why use bits here when storage is usually measured in bytes? 8 Terabit == 1 Terabyte.
The industry uses bits rather than bytes. If you buy 1tb NAND from a factory or NAND dealer, you're going to get 128GiB (or perhaps even 125TiB) of storage. The conversion to bytes generally happens the moment products start being offered to end users.
because that's what the underlying NAND chips the actual storage is made up of, are measured in
Terabyte nvmes selling for 60-80 dollars these days, and thats much higher than the prices last year. You’d be best off getting the top stuff though, I doubt Apple is using Chinese QLC, or bottom binned TLC.
I suppose 2230 NVMe drives are probably the best proxy because those use a single very dense NAND chip similar to the one in the iPhone. Those are around $100 for 1TB TLC, but that includes the NVMe controller and retail markup.
They're also using bulk pricing for the IC though, single quantity from digikey is around $130
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/memory/774?s=N4Ig...
Probably a dumb question, but what are the 3 taps for after screwing each screw? I presume they are tapping the screwdriver itself?
They're using a torque screwdriver, which ensures tightening to a specified torque to prevent excessive tightening. The "clicking" is made by the clutch that disengages once the preset torque has been reached.
> Probably a dumb question, but what are the 3 taps for after screwing each screw? I presume they are tapping the screwdriver itself?
I think it’s a torque screwdriver.
It’s a torque screwdriver as others have said but to me it made the whole video into an asmr experience.
I wonder what the reasoning is for grinding off the old chip instead of desoldering properly? Maybe the heat would damage something?
It's hard to see but the original NAND is epoxied to the motherboard, which wouldn't come away easily with heat. I'm not sure what the purpose of the epoxy is but he goes to the trouble of replacing the epoxy later in the video so there must be a good reason for it.
The epoxy protects from physical shocks and also helps manage the effects of thermal expansion, either of which could crack solder joints over time.
Ah, not taking any chances after bumpgate.
Apple has been epoxying BGAs at least as far back as the iPod nano 1st gen, released in 2005
It's called "underfill" and it's common for BGAs since the chip doesn't have the same thermal expansion as the PCB
I’ve seen some fascinating slo mo videos of devices bouncing from a decent fall in an X-ray machine. The battery in particular squishes way more than you think should be possible or right. Epoxy makes a ton of sense when you consider the shock that it takes.
The chip has an epoxy underfill. It softens slightly in the heat and desoldering is probably possible, but the amount of force required means you're likely to damage something in the process.
From the creator, in a reply:
"CNC is the safest and most efficient way. Using a hot air gun to remove it normally will cause irreversible damage to other components on the motherboard."
Yet, he uses hot air gun to solder the new chip. There are ways to safely remove that old nand chip, but why would they show the state of the art methods?
The epoxy below the original chip would require a lot more heating to remove than soldering in a plain chip.
CNC drill removal is safe and can be done consistently by a machine with consistent predictable results.
I was sure this was going to be a dosdude1 video, he's upgraded the flash on a lot of things
I can't believe they had to grind the memory chip off. I would have expected reflow work or something. Incredible.
This dude has more manufacturing skills than most countries.
this makes me feel better about paying for a 512GB model.
Does anyone know what's the purpose of the foam that's being removed at 3:50? Is it for waterproofing?
My first thought is acoustics.
Empty spaces are resonant spaces, and this can be heard when the phone's speaker(s) are playing sounds and/or the microphones are microphoning. Mechanically damping resonances is always superior to handling them with DSP -- a DSP doesn't need to account for resonances that simply aren't problematic to begin with, freeing it for other duties.
Such resonances can also be heard when handling the phone -- even when it is off. Tapping on the phone and hearing/feeling a dull, well-damped thud inspires more of a perception of solidity than a lingering resonance does, even though such foam itself contributes nothing to to the structure of the device at all.
Even back in the iPod days, one of the stated goals of the designers at Apple was to make their handhelds feel like a singular piece, like something that naturally grows that way (think fruits, crystals, etc) instead of disparate pieces tenuously held together. An impression of solidity falls in line with that idea.
Fruits. Yet if you gently tap on a biological apple, a ripe one actually feels slightly hollow inside.
Multiple purposes I suspect: Reduce vibration, even out thermals, etc. If water has gotten to that foam, something has probably gone very wrong.
I've wondered for a while if the 'non user upgradable' Macs were actually upgradable with enough effort. Seems so!
Even the ones with non-soldered NAND can't be upgraded by anyone besides Apple. The NAND chips are serialized or something.
That's a bullshit video. The guy conducting the tests doesn't know enough about how SSDs work or about how Macs boot to be drawing conclusions, especially not such strongly negative conclusions. He would have had to at the very least attempt a tethered restore from DFU (as is done for these phone storage swaps or any other situation where the NAND is blank or thoroughly corrupted) before concluding that Apple has everything totally locked down.
Adding the second drive module is something that we should not expect to work the way he tested it. Plugging in a second hard drive to a desktop does not magically give you a RAID-0 without extra steps; expecting this from SSDs doesn't make any more sense. And without reverse engineering the machine config from the quoted prices, we don't even know if the two modules had the same capacity, let alone the same type and manufacturer of NAND (which is probably important if the system is going to treat the two modules as one SSD instead of exposing them to the OS as one drive).
Confusion is understandable here because such technicalities were not officially documented and the community had not figured it out at such an early point.
That is some craftsmanship!
Cool, but hardly it was cheaper than just buying iPhone 16 Pro 1TB storage option.
Interesting the USB-C connector has A3294 China engraved into it. My production US version of 16 Pro has no such engraving.
can anyone explain why they have to grind off the old chip? (instead of unsolder it)
The old NAND chip is epoxied in (they reapply the epoxy on the new NAND chip too after installing later in the video).
How much does it cost?
I don't know if anyone can offer something like that seriously. And I don't mean it badly. Technically, a conversion including warranty would certainly be possible. But would it work commercially?
More capacity and faster.
Impressive work on undoing the Apple engineering and unnecessarily soldered component. The CNC grinding guarantees this is out of reach for many people.
The blatant greedy decisions Apple makes is what has turned me away from their devices in general. Been winding down my usage for a few years now and aging out my current devices.
CNC not needed, they just F with users...
User capture+lock in. I mean every sane minded person runs away from the iphone ecosystem when the first how can I get this file out from my phone and why it's such a mess experience kicks in.
> and unnecessarily soldered component
Seriously? Do you want a M.2 card slot in your phone?
(micro)SD/TF, many phones still have one.
All of those phones still have soldered storage as their primary storage. Removable primary storage isn't really a thing for smartphones, so calling it an "unnecessarily soldered component" is an extraordinary claim presented without any evidence. There's no standard removable storage form factor that's small enough to use inside smartphones that offers adequate performance for what's typical of today's smartphone operating systems and applications. microSD cards are fine for storing photos and videos (more for reading than sustained writing), but are horrible for random access and the performance gap between microSD and the soldered primary storage in phones is only getting wider.
> There's no standard removable storage form factor that's small enough to use inside smartphones that offers adequate performance for what's typical of today's smartphone operating systems and applications.
The question is why? I doubt that there are technical reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Flash_Storage#Versio...
Looks like the UFS card interface only has one lane, but phones have been using two lanes for more performance for a long time. Samsung is planning a four-lane UFS solution for next year, but it's not clear whether that's intended for phones or laptops (their Snapdragon X Elite laptop uses UFS rather than NVMe). And the removable UFS cards standards have tended to lag behind by a few years on link speed, so it's really a 4x discrepancy in bandwidth between soldered UFS and removable UFS cards.
In theory, something like UFS cards could have performance parity with soldered UFS (at least for the link speed; not sure if a package that small is adequate from a power/thermal perspective when stuffed with 1TB of NAND). But UFS cards have been dead on arrival in the market several times now, so it's understandable that nobody wants to try an even more ambitious version in the hopes that it can finally catch on.
phone storage hasn't mattered to me in years, what do you guys need the huge storage these days? the bulk of my data in the past was photos and videos, but now those are uploaded to the cloud and i instantly delete from my local phone.
Your media is more valuable when stored locally, because they can be retrieved easily without waiting for network conditions.
If you have the know how and the discipline to maintain proper backup strategy, then local storage(@ home) always wins over cloud in terms of pricing, flexibility or freedom.
Removable storage should come standard with any mobile device. It's ridiculous to have to do these kinds of methods to increase storage.
Next EU regulation incoming.
> Removable storage should come standard with any mobile device.
Removable storage should come standard with any device.
Sadly, Black and Decker no longer offers the Hammer + SD card combo deal.
Touché
The iPhone Pro supports high speed external removable storage via the USB-C port. I plug a thumb drive into my iPhone 15 Pro Max all the time.
If you're shooting photos raw, it matters. (I don't know anyone who insta-deletes photos from their phone even if they don't shoot raw.)
If you're shooting prores video... you have a portable usb-c jbod array, so I guess it doesn't matter indeed.
I like having things stored locally. I'm not always in a spot with great reception, so waiting for a video to load from google photos or whatever isn't an option.
I’ve done the math on whether it’s cheaper to pay for 1tb of local storage or 1tb of cloud, and local wins.
What about for a whole family of iPhone users? I've got the 2TB cloud plan which my elderly parents are on, my kids are on and me and my wife are on which is letting us get away with the smallest class of storage for each device we have.
I don’t want to hand over my pictures to a 3rd party.
Why not? The major player in this space (icloud) can do end to end encryption and it's easy to do local backups on your NAS
Local LLM models can be many GBs each. One can have many of them.
Is that something you actually do with your phone?
Look at all the hype around AI assistants lately. Having those run locally is definitely much better from a privacy perspective.
Many models of many GB each on a phone with only 8GB of DRAM doesn't make sense. Even on Android phones that have more DRAM than that, there's not enough performance for large models to be useful, let alone multiple models consuming tens of GB of storage.
> Many models of many GB each on a phone with only 8GB of DRAM doesn't make sense.
> there's not enough performance for large models to be useful
For iPhone, the Private LLM app offers 44 models in its easy-install menu right now (on 15 promax), with avg model size about 2.7 GB.
Total GB is ~120 GB to install and compare them all.
People could argue about what being useful means, but asking these different models the same question can give quite different (and indeed thought-provokingly different) results.
They all have either different foundations or different fine tuning or something. The same prompt gives rather different answers depending on what model you pick. It's fun that way.
So to compare their outputs, one would need 120GB free at once, then install them all, or else do some very inefficient and weird dance of uninstall-then-reinstall n times while picking and choosing which ones to try out for a given prompt.
And that's just for one offline "gen AI" app. There might be others.
This can be done offline, while on a walk, or whatever, without hitting any servers at all, in the palm of one's hand. Performance is good enough on iPhone for a bunch of tasks/prompts.
So, IDK. Does part of that not make sense? These models not being run run at once, and don't need to be in RAM at once. They're being stored on disk at once to be used when wanted. They initialize one at a time when in use. The large disk size is for storing the models. The phone can then use the models when wanted.
(Granted, it's not the "same" as hitting huge versions of the models sitting on some beefy infra, but we're talking about mobile devices here and actual current uses for having a bunch of local storage available on them.)
Yes, and it's awesome.
I have a lot of music on my phone. When I’m not in the US (I travel a lot), streaming music will eat up all of my data.
...as planned by apple
Can you do this without apple managing your data?
(it would be really nice to have a personal icloud replacement)
You can self host Immich for a photos replacement, including some of the neat machine learning tricks.
i use android and google photos because it's really cool to auto match faces of my friends and family.
but think about it, how crazy that someone can steal your phone and you would be totally fucked, priceless memories lost forever. now with cloud that's a non-issue no?
It doesn't have to be one or the other. Apple/Google can permanently lock you out of your iCloud account at any instant. You can only be sure of access to your data if it is physically on you.
And if you encounter pickpockets or get mugged, you won't have access to that data either. And don't forget to worry about natural disasters taking out your home.
Which is exactly why you should have a local copy and a cloud backup.
this consumes bandwidth, battery and cpu(?)
I’ll just spend more for the storage lol.
Now do the ram inside an M1+ SoC