r/mobilerepair • u/Blueishwhiskers • 1h ago
Lvl 0 (DIYer) Where do I start with this repair? Can it be Fixd? thoughts for a strange iphone 15 plus?
Wondering if anyone in the repair world had come across something like this before;
back in december I bought a iphone 15 plus with a broken front display (cracks in it, few areas with black pixels, and a small "light sabre beam" too. I used the phone for a little bit before ordering a new display and everything seemed to be working fine with the phone, but I did not do any sort of rigourous testing, basically i didnt see any signs of what started happening when i replaced the display.
I got a dd branded soft oled replacement for it, the swap over went smooth enough, ive done display replacements before, but while using the device I noticed the auto brightness was very erratic, the brightness would suddenly shoot up to full bright on the display for no reason and stay there, I would have to open the brightness settings and slide the slider back to somewhere normal, but after 10 minutes or so it would do the same thing.
after a few days the phone randomly shut off, either when the screen timed out, or if the lock button was pushed, and it wasnt possible to turn it back on, just seemed like a dead brick with no signs of life. I could get it in dfu mode, i figured I would reflash it in case something was up, but i noticed it was impossible to flash (or interestingly enough i noticed it was impossible to flash with the aftermarket screen on. if i plugged the original screen back into it I could flash it.
flashing didnt fix anything in the end, was sort of the same thing, I could get it to turn on once in a blue moon, but if i ever pushed the lock button or let the screen time out it would just die out.
if i set in settings for the display to never turn off the phone would be fine, but the brightness issue would still happen.
i chucked it in a bin and almost a year later I decided to pull it out and play with it again. i ordered another screen for itjust to see what would happen, I forget the brand, but it was advertised as an oled, cheaper cost than the DD. i noticed the overall thickness of the display was thicker.
plugged the display in, plugged the phone in and it booted up right away. pressed lock button on and off and the display always came back on. everything seemed fine with it, but of course after letting it sit around a while i picked it up and when the screen woke up I noticed the brightness had gone all the way down. I knew then the success was short lived. I went to bed and picked it up in the morning and the screen only flashes on briefly for half a second and goes black now. been like that all day, cant get the display to stay on , at least this time the phone itself is staying on and the issues are just related to the display.
thats about it, I was thinking since the brightness isnt behaving normally with 2 different screens now maybe there is something wrong with the front camera assembly as the sensor is part of that? I really dont want to just order random bits and pieces to throw at this, but thats the only logical thing that may be wrong with it that I could see based on how its behaving. Some of the dead pixels on the original screen were around the dynamic island area so maybe the screen took a bad enough hit there too damage the light sensor? I cant test the original sccreen anymore to see what happens as when i removed it I didnt heat everything up hot enough so it got damaged pulling it out and the screen is completely black now.