SMD rework (mobile phone) services?

[Nathan McCorkle]

TLDR; looking for mobile phone IC swap service. I have the ICs and a spare motherboard for resistors/caps/diodes if any failed parts are found.

My goal: getting my data off, Google backup was turned off. PIN is not authenticating after recent repairs.

Long story:

I took my phone (pixel 4a) into the sea and it wouldn't turn on even after rinsing with tap water, then 3x rinse with distilled water soaks (and an hour or so of blowing drying from a distance).

A repair shop near the scene of the accident was able to obtain a used phone, swap resistors, capacitors, and diodes near the charging circuit and volume up and down keys. They also said (!) they swapped the audio IC (CS35L41B), the PMIC (PM7150), and the power PA (QET4100).

The phone now turns on, but the PIN won't authenticate. Debugging wasn't enabled prior, so I believe I need to get authentication working to get my data off. Not sure if I could go as far as taking off the UFS chip and figuring out how to talk to it that way, or if the data on-chip is stored encrypted (or is it just the user access, or data bus?).

Presumably there's some system hardware component fingerprint which is not matching due to the different ICs having different ID codes or something (I remember they tried this around the Windows XP era too). Hopefully the SOC hasn't noticed this and dumped it's encryption keys, and I'm hoping to inspect the swapped ICs and see if some might look good enough to try replacing the originals so I can regain access.

I'm not confident the repairman (foreign language speaker that I had a translator help me communicate with) replaced the passives first, then tested, before moving onto the IC swaps. I have the original ICs that were removed from my motherboard... So I'm hoping there's someone in PDX that can perform the swaps for me... As I'm not confident with my rework skills at this level, even though I probably have most if not all of the equipment (hot air station, flux, helping hands, inspection scope, etc). I'm just not soldering much these days, especially not SMD and definitely not ball grid stuff (I may have never done those in fact).

Anyone have any leads on someone who can help? Or Pixel 4A PIN bypass hacks, lol? I saw there was actually one a few years ago (SIM pin PUK based reset bypassing OS PIN auth) , but it was patched about 6 months before security updates ended on this phone, so I'm not so lucky.

Thanks,

-Nathan 

[Tom Moxon]

I can highly recommend https://www.ichihuahuarepair.com/
they have have fixed my phone(s) and several friend's phones with great service.

best, MOX

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