iPhone Data Recovery from a Dead Logic Board
An iPhone 6 with no visible damage draws zero amps when connected to power. No water damage indicators, no cosmetic trauma. Over 32 minutes, the technician uses ZXW schematics to trace the PPVCC_MAIN power rail, confirms a dead short at 0.001 ohms, and systematically removes decoupling capacitors until the short clears and the phone boots.
Finding the Short on PPVCC_MAIN
PPVCC_MAIN powers roughly 95% of the iPhone 6's components. When the technician measures resistance at the L1500 inductor, it reads 0.001 ohms to ground. That is a dead short. The power supply detects it and shuts down immediately, which is why the phone draws zero amps and shows no signs of life.
The challenge: dozens of components sit on PPVCC_MAIN. Any one of them could be the culprit. Rather than guessing, the technician starts with the components that fail most often on this model: the decoupling capacitors at the top of the board. These small ceramic caps filter power rail noise. When they fail, they short to ground.
Removing Capacitors One at a Time
The technician removes each suspect capacitor with tweezers or a soldering iron, then re-measures the resistance on the rail. When the short disappears after removing a specific cap, that is the failed component. This test-remove-test cycle avoids unnecessary damage to the board.
The video also covers the iPhone 6's underfill situation. Apple applied protective resin to most BGA components, making removal harder. The baseband processor lacks underfill in some revisions. Since baseband handles cellular functions and is not needed for data access, a failed baseband does not block recovery.
Booting the Phone to Extract Data
Once the short clears, the technician reconnects the battery and monitors current draw. The phone begins booting iOS. All user data on the NAND chip is encrypted with a key tied to this specific CPU. Desoldering the NAND and reading it on another board does not work; the decryption keys will not match. The phone must boot on its own logic board, reach the passcode screen, and authenticate.
In this case, the test device had no passcode set, allowing immediate access. In real recoveries, the customer provides the passcode during the process. Without it, the data stays locked. That is Apple's encryption working as designed.
Dead iPhone, Irreplaceable Photos?
A phone that draws zero amps is not necessarily a phone with zero data. We trace shorts, swap caps, and get dead iPhones booting again for data extraction. No data, no fee.