Chosen Solution
I have an iPhone 7 that’s been a work in progress for the past 3 months, (striped of a lot of it’s parts due to a failed repair) at this point I finally got the thing to function normally for the most part, just missing the front-facing camera and speaker. I ordered a front-facing camera and speaker from eBay and both just got here today, I installed it and immediately started seeing problems, IT TOOK FOREVER TO TURN ON. After waiting like 15 minutes for it to turn on I look around and things seem normal, the camera was working just fine but now the mic doesn’t work at all, it’s not even an option anymore, no siri, no memo’s, nothing. Also the sound is completely dead, I can’t even turn it up or down anymore, volume rockers completely unresponsive. Unable to find a solution I just unplugged the flex to look for damage, with the flex unplugged it turned on normal as it did before with no problems, plugged in again no mic no sound, unplugged and it’s just fine. I’m so confused and honestly I just want a completely functional iPhone with no compromises. Anybody know what’s going on? Extra Info: (IOS 11.3) (Upon opening the camera and speaker I realized they were not OEM as the listing stated, don’t know if that has something to due with it or not)
Hey Richard, Like @refectio said, you do need to rule out a bad front cam assembly. Try a known good part, or at least a part from a reputed seller like iFixit (we are not affiliated with them, but we do use their parts because they are good quality). If the board is NOT liquid damaged, and using a known good front camera assembly does not solve your issue, you probably have a logic board failure that is very likely repairable by a microsoldering tech. We see a lot of iPhone 7 audio failures and repair them all the time. This audio failure can be due to the signature audio circuit failure which we see a lot , or to other damage (such as pry damage caused during a previous repair attempt either by yourself or someone else). The good news is that if it is indeed the signature audio failure, it can be properly repaired, and the design weakness can be patched, and the board becomes future proof against this particular failure. If the board IS liquid damage, then it may or may not be worth repairing depending on the extent of damage. And at this point really anything can be failing on the board.
The first red flag is when you wrote “eBay”. There are a lot of bad quality parts on eBay, even if the supplier is well rated. The good news is that eBay sellers are usually great when it comes to returns or whatnot. Considering that the problem went away once you removed the flex is pretty clear evidence that the replacement part was bad. Have it refunded and but your spare parts from a more reputable supplier, like iFixit :>).
