iPhone X Camera Not Focusing after liquid damage

I like your analogy to cancer...water damaged phones are the worst. With the advent of COVID related financial pressures on the economy and the fact that replacement phones now cost $1000 or more, I have been seeing a lot more people asking that I "fix" their water damaged phones. Are you seeing a similar pattern?

I've always refused but I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't offer a hybrid approach (minimum fee to cover rabbit hole devices, plus full dead phone fee plus major parts, no warranty - or something short like 30 days- and no guarantee that it will be 100% functional).

Let me link in Arbaman (@arbaman), Chris (@imicrosoldering) and Ben (@benjamen50) as well, I'd love to hear everyones opinions on this.

@refectio Happy to add my 2cents :) Problem with liquid damage is one never knows how many components have been touched and damaged before opening and decontaminating. In my view that means potentially one has to use quite some time, work, tools and materials just to be able to start the assessment and the result may be a hopeless case. After a decent number of experiences with liquid damaged devices I came to the conclusion that if customer is not ready to pay a "liquid damage fee" I'm not gonna take up the job, sorry.

When I then have the peace of mind of not just working for future glory, I can give an honest and reasoned view whether it's worth fixing the device and if a warranty can be implied..if it's just a small damaged area with a few passives why not.

"Data recovery only" might have a different approach alltogether, but as far as a repair is concerned that's the best I could come up with.

Great to hear from you @arbaman. Hope all is going well for you and your family!

I've updated to the latest IOS because I thought that would be causing the issue but I think that one of the lines of the camera is not getting proper power to focus and maybe causing this issue, I am still waiting on my microscope to arrive so I can further diagnose and maybe fix this issue

@iammyron07 If you disconnect the front camera is it still blurry? Even with camera issues I would completely rule out parts by trying it in another housing.

In the older model phones there use to be an LDO that supplied the camera power the LDO was also used to quieten down the noise as the cameras require very clean power. On the later model phones they have done away with the LDO and have their own power management unit (U3700) it could also be a dirty data line which would be hard to diagnose without an oscilloscope in any event besides parts and connector you will have to split the board as a lot of the camera components are underneath.