Component level Phone Repair in SA?

[DieSlaaibak]

Hi MB Gurus


Anyone know of a cellphone repair shop that can troubleshoot/repair phones?
Most only do like screen repairs and battery replacements

I have a dead Pixel 6 that probably has a short on the MB. Loads of Pixel 6's failed after a sep 2024 Android update.

There are several vids of guys in India and Pakistan being able to troubleshoot and repair these devices, surely someone in SA has the tools and knowledge?

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pixel+6+repair+dead


We need to retrieve some photos as evidence on the device Or alternatively a Data recovery specialist that can do NAND memory recovery??


Thank you in advance dudes

Slaaibak

 

[B-1]

Its usually not worth the effort vs getting a new replacement board installed.

You can pay for several hours of troubleshooting and in the end its not repairable or best case you end up with an old repaired MB vs just replacing it with a new MB.

 

[DieSlaaibak]

True, but new replacement board wont solve the Data issue.
Dont care much about the device TBH

 

[gregmcc]

Aren't your photo's backup up to iCloud?

 

[B-1]

True, but new replacement board wont solve the Data issue.
Dont care much about the device TBH

Its more a reason why you won't find many places to do board repairs.

What is the value of the pictures you need to recover?
You can speak to a surface level electronics repair place but if they have to work carefully to not lose the data it will probably not be cheap. The data itself is encrypted so reading it off the NAND is unlikely to help.

 

[Gravedigger]

Android devices these days have "full disk" encryption leaving only the bootloader stuff unencrypted to boot and then the unlock key resides in the secure enclave of the CPU, usually where part of your device's Widevine DRM keys also lies.

A bootloader unlock then will wipe all those keys, and, and wipe the userdata partition, since it is encrypted with these keys. You can imagine if there was a common way to retain the DRM keys, that you would be able to watch Netflix in 4K on a custom ROM, or pirate the shows and movies encrypted with DRM, by dumping those keys and using it to decrypt the videos. Big no bueno.

Best bet is, is to go to your local cell repair pakistani, and ask him if he can fix the phone, if not, ask him if he is aware of someone who can do it. They are heavily connected.

Our local pakistani did repairs on Blackberry devices way back then, and he was using microsoldering to replace dead components from donor boards.