Close up with the iPhone 3GS guts! – iPhone Tear Down

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During a recent repair to my iPhone 3GS I decided to take some close up shots…


All the parts broken down.


This is the front glass, digitizer (touch translation), and LCD.


Here’s another view.


The battery.


The motherboard front.


The motherboard back.


Charger port, Speaker (left), Microphone (right) – Front


Charger port, Speaker, Microphone – Back


Sim tray, Wifi antenna, Headphone jack, Power button, Volume buttons


Case trim/Cell antenna

After tearing the whole thing down and putting it back together, I’m really impressed with the hardware design. This is where Apple’s products shine. I did run into a few strange snags while doing the back replacement. See my next post for more info on that.

iPhone 3GS on Consumer Cellular with Edge data working!

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Read this first: This post is somewhat dated so I’ve written a follow-up post that could save you a lot of time if you just want a quick way to set up your iPhone or iPad on Consumer Cellular.

As you read on, you’ll see that this was a discovery process for me. I took several steps that weren’t really necessary. So try this first…

  1. Make sure your iPhone is jailbroken. Read up at the iPhone Dev Team blog for more info on jailbreaking.
  2. Update your AT&T carrier bundle to allow APN editing. You will need an SFTP application such as Cyberduck (mac) or Filezilla (PC) to connect in and see the files on your iPhone. Connect to root@youriPhoneIPaddress using the user name root and the password alpine (unless you’ve already changed the root password – which you should do if you haven’t already). Inside the AT&T carrier bundle, there is a file named carrier.plist. It is located here… /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/ATT_US.bundle/carrier.plist. It contains a property named “AllowEDGEEditing” which is a bool (true/false) property. If that property is not in the file, you can manually add it using the Apple plist editor (part of the Apple developer tools – a free download). I’m sure there are free plist editors for the PC as well. Note that this file must be saved in the same format that you found it (binary). Don’t try to save it as a plain text XML file. It won’t work. If you are using an editor other than the Apple plist editor you’ll need to make sure it supports binary when saving. After editing this file, go to Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network and enter the consumer cellular APN, MMSC, MMS Proxy and MMS UA Prof URL.

That’s it. If that doesn’t work for you, read on…

Here is what your carrier.plist might look like…

Discovery Process (don’t do this stuff unless you know what you are doing):
Finally after almost 2 years with an iPhone on Consumer Cellular I figured out how to get their data plan working!  It took a great deal of hacking at carrier bundles.  By default Consumer Cellular uses the AT&T bundle but for some reason it does not use the AT&T carrier name on screen.  I haven’t figured that one out yet.  At any rate, this is pretty kickin’ because Consumer Cellular is cheap and you don’t have to unlock your phone for them to work!  On the flip side you do have to jailbreak to do this hack.

I’m uploading my AT&T bundle so that you don’t have to go through all the work but you might have to anyway since there are signatures in the carrier.plist file.  I’m not sure if those are tied to the phone or not.  Here are the files…

Consumer Cellular Custom .ipcc (I really don’t think you need this)
Consumer Cellular Custom AT&T bundle
ATT_US.bundle (4.3.1)

There’s definitely an easier way but this worked for me…

Custom Consumer Cellular carrier bundle (I don’t think you need to do this part)…

  1. Used the carrier bundle generator website to create a bundle using the listed Consumer Cellular APN and MMS settings**.
  2. Installed carrier bundle via iTunes as recommended by the carrier bundle generator website.
  3. Using SFTP, copied everything in /var/mobile/Library/Carrier Bundles/ (including ConsumerCellular_custom.bundle) to my desktop.  This serves as a backup in case something goes wrong.
  4. Deleted everything in /var/mobile/Library/Carrier Bundles/
  5. Copied ConsumerCellular_custom.bundle to /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/

Custom AT&T carrier bundle…

  1. Using SFTP, copied /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/ATT_US.bundle to my desktop.
  2. Opened carrier.plist from inside the AT&T bundle on my desktop with the Apple plist editor and added settings that were in the Consumer Cellular bundle but not in this one.  I also updated the name of the provider and MMS proxy URL.  Download the custom AT&T bundle and compare it to yours to see what all I changed.
  3. Copied ATT_US.bundle from my desktop back to /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/.
  4. Restarted the phone.

Note that you can use SBSettings to check if you have a “Data IP Address” on the Edge network.  If this is helpful leave me a comment and let me know of your success!

**Consumer Cellular’s listed APN and MMS settings…

Service Name MMS Web
Proxy Address proxy.mvno.ccmobileweb.com <blank>
Proxy Port 80 <blank>
Proxy Push Disabled Enabled
Authentication Type Secure Secure
Username (CSD/GPRS) <blank> <blank>
Password (CSD/GPRS) <blank> <blank>
GPRS access point att.mvno att.mvno
Homepage http://mmsc.cingular.com http://mmsc.cingular.com

UPDATE:

  • It appears that after running this for 2 days, Consumer Cellular is not tracking my data usage.  Perhaps the hacked carrier bundle is causing the iPhone to bypass their servers and go straight to AT&T? Or perhaps they are tracking it but it’s not being reflected on their website since they still think I’m using an old Nokia phone and the data option is grayed out?  It took a while to show up but they are tracking it.
  • I noticed that in order to get data working I must disable WIFI, data and the phone components.  Then enable phone, then edge.  Sometimes it takes a few minutes to turn on.
  • I later enabled this on my old 3G running iOS 3.1.3.  All I had to do was add the “AllowEDGEEditing” bool property to the beginning of the carrier.plist file inside the AT&T bundle.  Then I went to Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data Network and entered the consumer cellular APN, MMSC, MMS Proxy and MMS UA Prof URL.
  • Since I originally updated my carrier bundle, the plain text APN settings that I added have been converted to “data” entries encoded using a signature (most likely specific to my phone). You’ll see this in the plist if you download the second file listed above. I’m not sure how to generate these signatures but I suppose you could just remove them from the file and then manually add the APN settings again. Perhaps new signatures will be generated for your iPhone after doing so?

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Cracking open the iPhone 3G

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This never happens but…   I made the mistake of carrying too many things at once, my iPhone being one of them.  I dropped it…   on the tile.  It hurts to remember.

I picked up my phone to find that it was prompting me to insert a sim card.

The annoying no-sim popup.

NO!!! After over 2 years of such careful handling, had I really turned my iPhone into an iPod touch?

I removed the sim card and reinserted it.  Still no luck.  Then it crossed my mind that the top of the phone is where it hit the floor.  Perhaps something was bumped north inside of it.  So I shook it a bit.  Believe it or not it actually worked!  The sim card registered and all was good.  Or so I thought.  Over the next day the sim card warning was on and off.  I didn’t recieve my text messages even when it appeared to have a signal.

I decided I would have to open it up and see if there was anything obviously wrong.  Here’s how it went…

Got the tools. Yah, that's a toy Spiderman suction cup.  Lucky for me, my son is a Spiderman fanatic.
These are the only screws on the body of the iPhone 3G.
I used the suction cup to gently pull the face off the phone. Notice how my thumb was slightly over the edge of the glass to prevent it from popping off quickly.
I gently popped it open. I pulled it open very slowly to discover where the wires exist.
The ribbon wires are at the top of the phone so you want to open it from the bottom.
I had to open the phone all the way to discover how to disconnect the ribbon wires. Apple electronics are always a little different than the rest.
There were 3 ribbon wires. The first 2 unsnapped from the circuit board.
The third ribbon requires you to flip this latch up before it will slide out.
I used the paperclip to pop out the sim card so I could check the connections.
The sim card slides out revealing the 3 sim connection points.
I made sure that the 3 sim connectors were sticking up off the circuit board high enough to make contact with the sim card.

I was amazed by how much finely dusted pocket lint was trapped inside the phone!

I didn’t find anything obviously wrong so I cleaned it out and put it back together.  Yay!  It works!  I’m guessing that one of the “snap-on” connectors was knocked loose from the impact.

One thing about Apple products…   you will always need a tiny screw driver and you’ve got to be really gentle.  When I opened my old school apple mouse to clean it out, tiny parts went flying.  As long as you move slowly and carefully you can see how it’s assembled.  I encourage you to not be afraid of opening up your electronics! It may save you some cash every now and then.  This project really only took me about 30 minutes.