Monday, February 4, 2008

1.1.2 OOTB Hardware Unlocking: Disassemble Iphone

I guess this is one of the hardest steps in the whole process. You will have to struggle to open the phone if you do not have ipod opening toolkit. If you do not have the ipod opening toolkit, be prepared to have some scratches on your cute device. All you need in this process is patience. I took 4-5 hrs to open my first iphone. Here is a tutorial from ifixit to open the body. Follow only till page-5 in this tutorial, where you completely remove the back cover.

If you do not have ipod opening toolkit, you can use some sharp object to poke into the slit of the black atenna cover and the metal back cover. I used a small kitcen knife to poke into the slits. Ofcourse, you will get scratches because of this. People around the world used different techniques to open the box. Some of them are using guitar picks, credit cards etc. There are some youtube videos to help you in this regard. Be very careful when you poke stuff near the battery. It can puncture you battery and your iphone can blow up.


Once you open the covers, your iphone will look like this. Articles from the web says that we need to open the metal cover. But I was confused which metal cover to open. The metal cover that needs to be opened is indicated in the above picture. The metal cover is glued to the pcb is some places, as shown in the pictures below.

Scrape the glue lightly so that you can easily open the metal cover. Once you scrape the glue, it becomes easier to lift off the metal cover which is held by small tabs.
The tabs are located on all the sides of the metal case. A gentle force is enough to release the tabs. Use some pointed device to release the tabs. I used my kitchen knife to do it.

It will look like this once you open the metal cover. (I blackened the numbers on the chips not to reveal the identity). If you are still wondering where to do the testpointing by scratching the A17 line, it is in the small circle towards the lower right corner. I was surprized to realise that it is so small. Even after looking the testpoint pictures on the web, I could not believe that I am going to make a scratch over those tiny lines. It took me a little time to map that images given on the web to the real pcb infront of me. That is why I highlighted the area for easily finding the testpoint location.



Next Step: Scratching A17 line
Previous Step: Gathering Resources

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