Two Dead Apple Watches, Can They be Revived?

hi guys welcome back to another huge Jefferies video in this video I'm going to be attempting to revive two dead Apple watches that are received in a previous tech lot of about 50 or more devices the first watch is a Series II row that briefly lights up on charging screen but keeps flickering off and refuses to charge the other is a series one and shows no signs of life I've left both on the charger for a number of days but neither boot up so it's time I attempted to repair them as you can see with the first one it briefly comes to the charging screen however if you remove it it immediately shuts off and sort of fades out the display this leads me to believe it could be a battery issue and as for the other one which shows no signs of life at all I believe maybe this could also be a battery issue maybe it's water damage I'm not too sure so we're gonna open that up and see what's wrong both do generate a fair bit of heat when on the charger although I've noticed that seems to be a common thing on Apple watches before I get started with the repair I'm going to apply a piece of adhesive to the back of the watch this will just allow me to stick it down to the table so it doesn't move around when I'm removing the display or working on other parts of the watch once I've positioned the watch onto the table I'm going to use a set of razors to be able to get inside of the device this one right here is a curved one and I think that's going to be best for getting underneath the glass without cracking it because the screen is adhered into place I'm going to use this heat gun to be able to soften the adhesive and get into the device now unfortunately this isn't an easy job even with the blade it's very hard to get underneath the adhesive and you end up just sort of sliding around the sides of the screen although I'm not doing it I would recommend wearing some really thick gloves because the blade could slip and you could slice off a finger or two I'd also recommend wearing eye safety protection which I was doing at the time of this video in case you do damage the display and it shatters into a million different pieces with that being said it took about ten minutes of prying before the blade finally slipped underneath the display and it was time to remove it now once you insert the blade I would keep the Display propped up from read hearing down and then I would recommend going around with a plastic pick to loosen up the adhesive on all the other sides of the display however as you can see in this instance I use the play to run around the edge I wouldn't recommend this as it can easily slip inside of the watch and you can stab the battery or damaged ribbon cables once you've separated the adhesive you can finally lift up the display panel and move it across to the side so I can pry out the battery unlike iPhones the battery in an Apple watch is very easy to remove as it's only got a light amount of adhesive the battery itself is connected to another cable and because it's not secured into place is actually quite difficult to disconnect and reconnect a new battery but with a little bit of patience I was able to connect up the new battery once it's connected into place I'm going to temporarily put it inside of the housing without sticking it back down pressing and holding the power button showed no signs of life still however I thought the battery could be flat so I double-checked on the charger unfortunately I still got no signs of life coming across to the first-generation Apple watch the one that just blinks the charging symbol I feel that this one has a little bit more of a chance of being revived so I'm going to go ahead and do the same process as the first watch and remove the display by hitting it up with my solder rework station are using hot air and then of course using the plate to get underneath the blade itself appears to be able to get under the screen easily but as the adhesive is quite strong it tends to lose grip take a listen as with the first Apple watch it took quite a bit of time to actually get underneath the display enough to be able to separate the display and the watch housing this time I used a plastic pick as I wanted to minimize the amount of damage I could cause to the watch itself trying to get up the display this actually worked a lot better and it was much easier to be able to slide around and successfully separate the display and housing moving the display to the side I can take a look at the battery itself and I can see in this instance that it is swollen so that is definitely a faulty battery and I'm going to need to replace that with a new I have this exact same issue with my 42 millimeter Apple watch first-generation Apple themselves don't repair watches instead they just replace the unit and toss the old one out so if you like me and try and prevent technology from ending up in landfill you're going to have to repair the device yourself so with this one I'm going to need to install a new battery connecting up the same battery I used to test out the Apple watch series 1 I can put it inside of the watch and press and hold down the power button and somehow we're now getting absolutely nothing out of this watch same goes for when it's on the charger and this had me thinking I might have damaged the display when I was removing it given the fact that the removal process itself is actually quite difficult and using a razor blade may have damaged the screen itself so I'm going to swap across the two displays on the Apple watches we just took apart not only will this tell me if I damaged the display from the original Apple watch but also test out this screen from the dead Apple watch we weren't able to revive so swapping across the display and reconnecting up a battery sure enough the Apple watch it booted up and it booted up successfully however it's locked to the passcode I could erase all content and settings but find my Apple watch is on which means if I did that the device would no longer be able to activate but more on that issue in just a second now I'm going to seal down the watch before I actually take a look at trying to get past the passcode and remove the find my watch problem the adhesive for the display is actually part of the force touch gasket so I'll need to replace that as the new one we'll have fresh adhesive which will hold down the new display so ripping off the old one I can install this new force touch gasket back onto the device I used a sponger to press it down into place making sure it's adhered to the housing of the watch correctly before I move on and connect it up one connector is all it takes and one trailing screw I can then reconnect up the display and install its proper retaining bracket which goes on top the bracket itself is actually quite difficult to install because there's not much clearance between the display and the housing once you have the connections installed after a little bit of wiggling and some patience I got it connected properly I could then connect up the battery and adhere it down into place with the battery pressed in and ready to go I can make sure the Apple watch is still functioning finally I can remove the protective film on the top of the adhesive and firmly press the display back into position now that our Apple watch is back up and running it's time to fix up this passcode issue I thought I'd guess a few pass codes and the first one I guessed was four zeros sure enough that was the pass code to the device and I'm now inside and this means we can finally take a look at trying to get the find my watch removed as well as just see the general configuration of this watch jumping into Settings General and about you can see that belonged to someone named April it is an 8 gigabyte unit on watch os 2.2 the watch itself is absolutely loaded with contacts so being able to contact someone to have the find my watch removed shouldn't be too difficult but given it's Christmas I haven't done that just yet I can whack on a new band and we're done so this is it I've been able to revive one of the two Apple watches that were previously completely dead while I would have liked to have both of them up and running I'm still happy with the outcome this watch itself was previously paired to an iPhone 6 plus which would have been running some version of iOS 9 the watch itself hasn't been used since the 31st of December 2016 so it's been quite a while since anyone's used this watch I should be able to get the find my watch removed by getting in contact with the owner through some of the contacts on this watch while I can't use the watch just yet I'm almost certain I'll get the lock removed in the not-too-distant future in case you're wondering the battery that came out of the den Apple watch we were unable to revive is also stone dead so I'll probably only use that broken watch as spare parts and on that note this has been a huge FES video if you liked what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the restoration playlist for more videos just like this one also make sure to follow me on my social media link for which is down description that's all for this video and I'll catch you guys next time

Channel: Hugh Jeffreys

Views: 1,308,983

Keywords: Hugh, Jeffreys, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, technology, repair, restore, Apple Watch

Id: b1krl9yvlIc

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 28 2019