An Unforgettable iPhone Data Recovery

almost two years ago I recovered data from one of the most unforgettable phones that I've ever had to work with it was a phone that was from the hate crime in Olathe Kansas in 2017 where Sereno couch Ebola was murdered for no reason other than the color of his skin and his ethnicity in a horrible horrible act of criminal violence the perpetrators in jail and I've had this video that I live streamed for three hours back in May of 2017 YouTube cut off the last I don't know hour and 15 minutes of the video so not many people really got to see this amazing recovery and no one got to see the the story of us being able to deliver the good news one of the things that I that we promise to sunayana when we when we called her and told her that we got these memories back was that we would try to shine a brighter light on this story so even though this was two years in the past it's still very relevant today I want for you guys to take a minute do something in your day today to show someone else some love teach your children not to judge people and try to stamp out hate or wherever you can so I'm going to dedicate this video to use renew and your phone was one of the most unforgettable recoveries and I hope that some people can learn from your story you this is a unusual an unusual case that I wanted to kind of do a special stream for this is a data recovery and I don't know whether or not we'll be able to recover the phone but we're gonna try I've spent some time with this phone already and it's really disturbing where this presentation of the phone is that it is filled with some person who's now dead filled with blood from them and that's what has killed this phone so it's not water damage this is this is severe human blood damage on this phone and this person was killed just straight-up shot because of nothing other than his ethnic presentation and that's that just really is so just so horrible and when you see something like this I mean this happens all the time and we we kind of don't care we don't really plug in or we'll click through the news and we'll just you know kind of yeah yeah yeah you know more bad news in the world go figure but I but I want to take a minute to sort of reflect on what is it what is it that you're doing in your life that that contributes to this sort of you know cultural idea that we are we are losing as a as a world of people we are losing tolerance for others just in general and what I've learned by looking at so many phones here for data recovery that we are all so much the same each of these phones everyone's phone is is far more similar than different everyone's phone has pictures of somebody's birthday some amazing plate of food sushi you know that they got at a fancy restaurant everyone has a picture of a beach and some sort of vacation picture everyone has a screenshot of some funny meme and it's it's universal you can get a phone from anywhere in the world and we see phones from all over the world and you you cannot tell these people from one another you're all so so so much the same and that it just it breaks my heart to think that we're we're teaching our children intolerance and we're growing up in a society where there's so many more pressures as we live in this Internet age that we doesn't have to face as a species before we're a part of an experiment you know never before has information been so accessible never before have our brains been bombarded with so many choices and things to research and things to constantly think about we've never before had so much anxiety we've never before had so much difficulty with focus and concentration we've never before lived without a deep connection to nature on a daily basis this is an experiment and we're we're kind of sucking at it we're we're not doing well so I want to share this phone with you all right so let's go ahead and take a and take a look this macroscopically maybe so this is the this is the screen of the phone I don't know if you'll be able to see this or not this is what it looks like on the back let's look under the end of the microscope so you can see just how severe this was this is a person this is someone who didn't come home this is the housing and I don't know if we'll be able to fix it or not but we're gonna definitely try all right so let me catch you up with the with what I've already done so when I first took the board out it was horrifying it was just caked in blood so I had to give it a bath in the ultrasonic before being able to do anything after that I took off the shields and and the shields I've never had shields that were just glued to the board so this the entire board itself was almost like as if it had been put in an ice cube tray and frozen the dried coagulated blood was like that all under and in the board itself so I spent a long time just trying to clean and clean and clean this board to kind of get it to a point where I could look at it after that I went looking to see if I could find any shorts and I'll show you what we can look at its current state right now all right so it's cleaned up dramatically now and now it looks like fairly standard kind of liquid damage so we have some you know just kind of standard liquid damage along connectors which is typical I've taken off some chips and I'll explain the troubleshooting that I've already done as we kind of go through this board do they have the passcode they do that was the first question before it before taking this repair continuing up this is the worst of the board here in this area so you can see that power management chip is now gone so as audio IC and Mason and cumulus likely have a lot of dried clotted blood did not have a short on VCC main so that was great it also did not have a short at those NAND area power lines that are commonly shorted so all that was great and then I looked to see if it had PMI C function so I what I connected it to power to see what it would do and it clearly had a short and so then I hunted around with a multimeter to try to find the short in the least aggressive way possible and what I found was a short on the one v8 SDRAM line now that's one of my least favorite shorts because the one v8 SDRAM line goes mostly to the CPU and and so if the short is within the CPU there's no path to data because the CPU is unique to the to the phone so if the CPU itself has been electrically damaged then there's no path to data so I was hoping that it wasn't the CPU so let me show you what zxw has to say about that line alright let's look at this one v8 SDRAM line alright so the cap that I use to kind of look at this is always this guy all right so this is pp 1 v8 SDRAM this line had a partial short it should have about 2 Killah ohms to ground and it only had 20 ohms to ground so that was that was short and this little cap was missing this cap was severely damaged so I kicked that off right away and then other potential candidates for how we could have a 1 v8 SDRAM short was the backlight driver which was damaged so I took that off I pulled this cap and then when it was not short I put him back this is a test point and then over here there is one v8 SDRAM that goes into this little chip and I cleared cleared that so that was not that was not the cause of the of the short over here we have a little resistors the resistor himself cannot be the cause of a1 v8 short and then on the other side of the board we have audio IC so that's why I pulled audio IC I checked both of these cats that left it with either the power management chip was the cause see how the the line originates here the power management chip and then it goes through this it's part of a buck control that ultimately leads to one v8 being distributed into the CPU and the rest of the and the rest of the phone let's see how there's so many tiny little spots around the border of the CPU it's really common fault for the one v8 SDRAM short to be actually within the CPU or little balls on the edge of the CPU so that was what is is really a drag so before declaring ok it's in the CPU I needed to rule out that it was within the PM I see so the last thing that I did on this phone earlier today was to pull the PM IC and the and when I did that the PM I see it was was just a terrain racket was absolutely horrible so now I believe that that short has been cleared so let's check on that so we'll go to our cap the one v8 SD RAM canary cap I guess let me grab my multimeter and get it fired up all right so we have 0.33 8 in diode mode and that is a normal reading for that line so without the power management chip on there we have a normal SDRAM line everywhere else so we're gonna leave the power management chip off for now so let's go ahead and take off and see what see what it looks like under under the mason chip so that's where we're gonna that's where we're gonna go with this all right so we'll put some flux on there I also want to do this job first before going back to the power management chip so that the board is a little bit warmed up all right so that looks bad so I mean I'm glad that we took that off see how it is the presentation is like it's like underfill I mean this is this is different than really any standard corrosion did they catch the guy who did this they did they did so that is there is some there is some justice as well theme of living as experimental guinea pigs for the first time ever in our evolutionary history living in this environment of constant sensory overload constant information overload constant awareness of you know other people it's really easy it's a lot easier now than it ever has been to kind of have a feeling of I don't have what other people have other people are doing better than me [Music] I'm just gonna heat it a little bit so that I can get some of this out gloves air filter I had a lot of I had gloves and air filter going last night I did do one kind of mean thing though when when this phone first came in i trolled christine who does intake a little bit she brought it over here barehanded and the screen the screen was off and I said oh is that the phone from the guy that had HIV and she freaked out that was a little bit mean that was a little bit mean but then once I looked at this phone it just really turned sad okay you'd think someone with a degree in biology would understand the dangers of breathing in lead not breathing in any lead she shouldn't be leading by poor example here you established for me how anybody's breathing in any kind of lead that doesn't make any sense okay let's I think we should take off who the eff names these chips that's the big question I would I would I would really liked for somebody somebody to to make friends with somebody on the inside and tell me cumulus Mason where does that come from I don't know I think we should take off cumulus because of the presentation of all the other surroundings I'm definitely gonna change the ultrasonic water when we're done with this foam that's why I wanted to kind of I came back in tonight to try to get an answer one way or the other all right this is what it looked like under under the cumulus chip not good back to cleaning kind of a little bit out of reach so what we primarily see is family based data recovery alright while we are here let's not lose our little cap alright alright so let's start putting some chips back cumulus on here all right let's get Mason on next led me needs much higher tempers to vaporizer that's right it's the flux that is dangerous as the heat breaks it down yeah all you know it is a good idea to use a theum extractor which I turn on when I am here by here and not trying to talk on a video but knows is really distracting especially because the one that I got has a squeak in the seal so it is quite quite annoyingly noisy but the danger is occupational asthma occupational asthma from just the irritants that would be in the fumes from the burn flux all right so there's our mason ship as long altra sonic is made to sanitize dental equipment so it kills all cells and living stuff maybe the one v8 sdram short is as of right now gone I gotta move back that guy he is going to be important and I don't want him to get forgotten so corroded around here let's nudge back this little resistor then we're gonna go for our p.m. I see and then we are gonna see what happens and if it doesn't have a short then I would come right back to this area because all these little resistors don't look good and they're all required for some of it so I'm gonna stick a quarter for a heatsink on the CPU itself opposite of the power management show and hopefully I have a good p.m. I see and it looks a little burned I don't like how burned that spot is all right is everybody a puffy pillow and not too big you all right now we have to let it cool all the way down and see if we were able to place that without creating a short sometimes that can be right should we go ahead and cross our fingers and find out if we caused any obvious short so let's see number one do we have a VCC main shirt which would be the most common short all right let's actually get a reading and the reading is normal 0.317 so we did not cause a VCC main short and here's the reason why I say VCC main shorts are the most common shorts after a PMI see replacement so if we click on VCC main you can see that the job of the power management chip itself is really to take the VCC main that's the aorta of the phone the big artery that carries essentially the battery voltage that's ground let's click over here so here's VCC main its plugging in to the power management chip in all these different spots so if you are nudged over it's really easy to get a VCC main short so a quick VCC main check tells you right away if your placement is off now here's what we really care about here's what we are trying to the the whole problem we're trying to solve is do we did we grow back our short on the 1 v8 SDRAM line through changing putting the PMI sea back on so let's check to find that so our hope is that that short is gone let's find out if it is let's find out if we have improved from the original condition which was 1 v8 SDRAM shortened alright so let's see what is that number tell me point 3 2 4 yay we do not have a short on one v8 SDRAM and we have a PMI see that is intact while we're here we'll go ahead and check these other CPU lines because this if these are short then that can be really bad news so this one is normal and that one is still it's a little low at 0.28 I'd like it to see them be more like 0.7 but we're gonna we're gonna go with that okay what should we do now should we test are we ready to test are we ready for our crushing disappointment let's test that's gonna prompt prompt it to boot and pull it out I don't see it responding to that prompt to boot with the doc so I'm gonna rule out bad doc no response like a zero response generally means something's not connected rather than really giving you information oh there's no tigress on this phone that's another reason why you would have zero response all right forgot I forgot we took off tigress tigress is required for data hey there you go tech news he remembers there's no tigress on here you're absolutely right there is no tigress on there I forgot about tigress that was yesterday let's see yeah my shirt my shirt no rap involved you remind me not to sit here until 6 o'clock the morning trying to beat on this part here you go buddy great job sliding into place we'll give him a little nudge that little knock like that that I do on chips helps me to sort of break up any kind of like a head on a pillow effect like if you had a solder ball and a pad and the solder was liquid and the pad was liquid but they don't actually you know become a joint then that will will give you problems so that tiny little imperceptible nudge you know will help you alright now we have to kind of let it cool for a second okay so I have it connected to DC power four volts and it's at zero which is good before prompt to boot now let's prompt to boot again prompt to boot and I still see no response which again kind of points back to a connection problem so let's change out that doc which doesn't really look like a great doc anyway so if the thing cannot understand that I plugged in a USB to prompt it then that would really kind of point to something between the dock connector oh I think there I think I replaced the dock connector for some reason yeah it's not understanding me plugging in USB but we'll come back to that first let's see what happens if I try to just prompt it to boot at the power button so we'll look at the power button itself and see if it responds to just some tweezers in the power button all right it doesn't so let's look back and see if I have a problem connecting my VCC main nope that looks like it's okay say genes dog this what a customer oh my god they're probably gonna leave a better view true story a little bit more interesting but you got to have you got to keep like jacking it up a notch you know like nobody's really gonna even like to read about genes dog peeing on a customer unless I say genes dog came to work and you won't believe what happened and sheep you know the customers like you know okay so let's go to the zxw so way these power buttons work is they have usually a usually there's an always on voltage so let's just search for that let's search for the word always right so here's one pp 1 B 8 always this guy PP 1 v 8 always here's our oh 3 1 4 that is itself kind of the overall signal hey wake up so we can we want to test to see whether or not that signal is arriving over here so let's see if we actually have one v8 arriving at that spot if we do then we can figure out where the look at our board and find that spot all right so it's this guy or here here so we need to have one v-8 present there and since I didn't see one v8 at these one v8 caps I'm gonna guess that we probably don't have that well let's find it should be here and what we have is 0.64 which is a cop which is very odd honestly 0.6 sports the explanation we're supposed to have 1.8 volts there and who's supposed to make it the power management chip that's his job and how does the power management chip make it well these gets plugged in to VCC main and then inside the chip is it going to be a series of transistors and diodes in the silicon of the chip and then there's going to be you know coils coils outside that are various buck converters for various lines that it's supposed to chop up that VCC main voltage and send out the 3 volts the one point to the zero point nine five to one point eight all of the little voltages that various subsystems of the phone need and this one is not doing that it's not doing that for that one point eight so why is it then it's not a zero it's not doing it down to zero so what are the possibilities here one is the PM IC is not well connected so that's one possibility that it's that it's not well connected but because it's not zero that likelihood actually kind of goes down a little bit number two is that there's a partial short to ground so it is making the one point eight out of the PM I see but there's a hole there's a hole in the artery and so we have a leak you know so there's like a our blood pressure we can't maintain our blood pressure because we believe to ground so somewhere in that line we could have a short to ground so that's a possibility and then the third possibility is that this particular PM IC chip itself the internal workings of it just are not working bad chip so it's getting the three point eight it is sitting on the ball maybe but it's not able to actually switch and chop up that battery voltage four and put out 1.8 so those are our three possibilities of those and this is where you know I think this repair starts to become a little bit fatiguing because I think we started it pretty close to 11:30 so 12:30 1:30 this is about where I kind of you know put things aside so that it's always go ahead and we'll gently reflow our p.m. I see so we're gonna get back our quarter just in case there is something that just didn't quite make a good connection when we placed it it would be kind of fun I mean just the I think once if we reflow the the PMI sees that we were like extra double sure that it was didn't have any kind of head on pillow that we talked about we could at least in theory inject the 1.8 volts and then make it go to zero by grounding it and that would sort of serve as a prompt to boot which would then wake up the power management chip and tell it to start making all of its other voltages at least in theory but we may not have to spend super long time carrying about this one line if that's the if this light is kind of the only the only problem so it needs kind of a bath now I think we've really gotten rid of all of the all of the serious blood on this board and it's starting to seem and starting to feel more like a normal problem and not one that just is so emotional it just is difficult to work on like it was initially all right so I'm working on my and I want to be able to give it the gentle nudge I gotta have them floating in order to be able to do that and I want to watch out for my Heat's on the cpu five seconds too long things go wrong I can't nudge them yet and I need flux to be present in order to float everything to bring it closer to me to get a little bit more of an angle there we go see that nudge nudge alright that was definitely a lot of nudging reiatsu Pete we got PMI c-bro re hot p.m. I see it's 1:45 a.m. right here what is it's bedtime yeah that's the other thing I say about these kind of rabbit hole ports or that become pets this one's not quite at pet status but when you do have a pet board that you've worked on for three sessions which apparently is about two hours we like to think that oh it's twenty to thirty minutes no no it's not it's two hours time that after you do that three times then it's your pet where you're invested it is crossed over from being a something that you're no longer motivated to work on it because you intend to collect an invoice at the end you have moved into hobbyists so that's fine but you have to be aware of that so if you're choosing to kind of work on these hobby boards then they're your pets and pets have to you have to work on them so you're kind of feeding them you're playing with them you're hanging out with your pet but then your pet has to take a nap so at this point we would put our pet away and then we would have to come back to please bro solutions please bro solutions is really a term that that that I popularized them pretty sure I don't think anybody and pretty sure that comes from me so the please bro is the for what is the cultural response that people use when asking for a canned no thinking required one-size-fits-all solution to complex problems so it would be like we've got an iPhone I've got an iPhone six filled with blood won't turn on please bro what's the solution the solution is learn how to do border fare you know the solutions are nothing let's check to see have we now created a VC see main shirt which has a really good likelihood since we really we saw a lot of movement on that chip alright give me a reading I didn't get a reading VCC main is not short hooray signs of heat around here which is good I don't see little blobs and bubbles of too much heat how's this doing that is normal that is hey we got it up to 0.03 that's good all right all of those are correct no shorts let's just see where we are now so we did sort of step one of chapter two which would be where the hell is one v8 always on this board all right let's go to our spot and see what kind of voltage are we getting we'll try it hey 1.8 look at that alright let's look back at that 1.8 what's the iron and I wondered if that was always there yep zero all right so there's 1.8 there that's good that means the that means the p.m. IC is doing its job progress 1b 8 is a step in the right direction it is we made progress we've made two big pieces of products look up on the schematic let's kind of get to a stopping point here all right down there a below just one more thing that's the definition of like why if we call it rabbit holes it's that the rabbit is just is always just one step ahead it's not like it's way down there it's like well if this may be the only thing wrong and in fact likely so like there's a good chance that the only thing wrong here is a 1v8 problem which is kind of solvable in which case you know yay I mean we know that p.m. IC function at least on that line is good I'm sure that this p.m. IC is down on everything now nothing is shorted this is great you know this is definite progress so seems like you know the the rabbit just kind of jumps one step ahead first it was just first it was just you know kind of clean clean everything up and you have sdram short clear the SDRAM sure okay we cleared this short okay now it needs to the power me okay so I think that I have really gotten to the end of where I would start making mistakes so this board and I don't want to do that so I'm just gonna kind of see if there's any change and just stick it on here I I never did prompt to boot the other way with the power button with the USB so let's just make sure that we don't get any flicker that way since it looks like we've healed our 1v8 problem a little bit at least hey I do get a flicker yay well I wasn't expecting that all right so I prompted with USB and I saw movement so let's test and then we'll be done I swear like that is it's like it it'll be totally done cuz I'm getting tired because I'm almost I had to like drink this much Diet Coke in order to even do this dream alright here we go this is our last test I'm gonna put a screen on it because I saw I saw current I saw a prompt to boot happening now we're gonna now we're gonna be caught up to where we thought we were like an hour ago this would be all everything we've done which we're not going to list and now we're gonna test since we've solved the fact that we are getting an absolutely straight-up flat zero okay so I have connected it to DC power supply and now I'm going to prompt to boot and now we're going to look at these numbers so prompt and it's moving and I see a current consumption I'm going to disconnect so that I can really read that and it's saying 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.6 7 I'm gonna look for image I see an Apple logo yay it looks like it could be booting so let me see if I can make it so that you guys can see that so I see an Apple logo and I'm gonna reconnect it to that looks like normal current consumption it's going high it's 1.3 1.2 1.5 that's a little too high I'm gonna connect it to here I can hear it I heard it detect yay this is serious progress all right let me see if I Tunes detects it in normal mode yes it detects it so iTunes sees this phone this phone has booted so now we need to work on touch and have image I see a passcode all right let's see if I can get this passcode do I have touch I can't I need to get a better screen all right I'm gonna that's a piece of screen all right so I'm gonna get a screen that that I'm not questioning yeh see going down that rabbit home and tear this shirt up so that right now this phone boots and it I want to show you that it connects to iTunes but I I can't I can't let you see that name that would that would be - how could I hide that could I put a window on top of it yeah so trust me it says connect to itunes do you want it this computer to access blank phone which is the guy's name awesome yay all right let's see if we have touch if we don't have touch that's definitely me samples this this I think I think we're gonna get a path to data so this is really really exciting and really horrible for the message of not going down rabbit holes and all right let me put a screen on it that and let me get a light so that you guys can can see this actually boot now it's gonna be really hard not if touch doesn't work all right see that yay I wouldn't let it sit I'd fix touch and get I always have more issues after they said all right here's this is the let's see if it has touch I'll disconnect so you can hear that disconnect that's iTunes recognizing it okay yes oh my god it is touch okay aaaa oh this is awesome this is so great this is really awesome really awesome trust yes this is great oh this is so great I'm super happy yay yay we solved it yay all right I'm gonna move it over to the data recovery computer yay path to data so I was able to boot it it was the correct passcode and I was able to hit trust so we have a path to data and they'll be able to get those pictures back and III this is a really this was a really fulfilling repair and the you know being able to make that call is going to be really awesome to to deliver them the family these memories and and at least for them to know like like like there's there's peace in knowing what were those last moments like you know to see the the text or the messages and whatever's on that phone so so I'm really happy to be able to get this result and when we contact the family if they're willing to share their identity then we'll ask if we can kind of like you know share share a picture so and kind of change that so that this video will we'll have some more context but so thank you guys for hanging in and I gonna go take this over and actually recover the data so that tomorrow morning she will get that phone call and it's going to be and that's gonna be really great all righty I was gone for five minutes what happened that sucks that that that sucks the hanging in with a stream for for forever and then taking a leak we solved it at Boots so so that's great yep boots what did she have to do last to get it in working condition so we were stuck we did that we had you know but a ton of work like tons and tons of stuff but then ultimately we were stuck at why was it missing the 1v8 always line which is the prompt to boot so we were kind of suspicious because it was just a complete flat zero on DC power supply that's really abnormal you only get that with a connection problem then we found that there was like dock connector had cold joints power button connector also had cold joints solve that and then we went and hunted down one v8 line1 v8 always and we found that it was low was one third of what it should have been it was at 0.6 it should have been 1.8 and so then there were a couple possibilities-- chatted about that and one of those was that that ball that one ball that generates one v8 out of the PM I see may not have it may have been that head on pillow effect because I only nudged one side of the PM I see when I first seated it so we went back and we hot PM I see bro and then I gave it nudge all the way down and made sure to see that click which is taking a risk because that's a lot of heat but we were lucky we did not get a short on VCC main we did not get a short on any of those CPU lines and they did not look like they had too much heat so we were confident about that went back and checked one v8 1b it was present so that was a that was a big win and then after that the power button still I think that just looks really shitty and I think there's something in the the path of that that maybe messed up or the connector itself still maybe bag very corroded in that area so the last thing I tried was well then now that we've brought back when v8 will it now boot from DC USB prompt to boot and I was you know surprised actually so I that was the last thing god damn and fail the last thing that I'm going to do so we did plugged it into USB and it did start acting like it was going to boot so grabbed a screen and it did boot and it had touch which you know I'm glad that we had replaced the cumulus and Mason in advance because that would suck to have to do that now so iTunes detects it and I was able to enter the passcode and hit trust and I could see data so we have a path to data and we'll we'll be able to give them good news all right so we're gonna it's the next day and we have recovered the phone so this is that's it's over there so here's the phone I did fix backlight in the end so that it could go back so that the family could at least be able to kind of you know see and use the phone so it accepts touch it charges I put it in a different housing the screen was not usable so we gave it a new screen so that they can kind of look and feel it working and we're going to call them now with the good news and and and let them know that we got this hi this is Sunday Thompson with iPad rehab we spoke earlier we have your phone here for data recovery so Jessa put about six hours into this and a lot of time that the board was severely corroded and it was she was about to give up but she was able to get the device to power on and pull all the data off of it yes we see a face of a beautiful smiling man on there and we really just want you to know how sorry we are for your loss and that it meant a lot for us to be involved with this repair and to give this back to you the phone is not working a hundred percent but you are able to see that the pictures view the image on the screen and go through his apps and music and we burned it all through a USB flash drive so you have that to just put into a computer but we thought it'd feel good to hold the phone in your hands and see it again you are so you are so what good I'm glad we know that we don't want you you've lost enough so we want to do everything we can to help you get that bad you're welcome do you have any questions about the phone or what I'll do is I'll just I'll send you an email with all the information that you need to get it back to you and if you if you have any questions you can call me anytime and I'll take care of things for you but we'll get this shipped out to you as soon as possible so you know everything's on a USB that we could find I'm gonna put you on with Jessa who did the repair so she can be more specific hi there Oh your phone made me cry so much that was such a horrible presentation and I just want to give you a big hug [Music] you

Channel: iPad Rehab

Views: 34,339

Rating: 4.8735561 out of 5

Keywords: olathe kansas, hate crime, iphone data recovery, tragedy, iphone forensics

Id: AjsWL4zGYhg

Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019