This time I did it right. I bought the new phone before trying to repair the old phone. Glad I did because I somehow broke my old phones home button in the process. My iPhone 7 Plus has been a faithful workhorse for about four years. The problem was that the battery could no longer discharge enough current for max cpu usage. After buying a new phone I decided to try and replace the battery myself with a 20 dollar kit from amazon. I managed to do it, but the home button no longer works. Glad I waited until I had my new phone.
Lessons learned:
1. Get the metal tool, the skinny curved one that can gently slide around the screen to remove the adhesive like the pros use in the videos. The plastic one requires you to pull up too much which I think is what helped to break the home button and finger print sensor. I tried using an exacto knife which helped but I broke the tip off twice resulting in two metal pieces inside the phone that could cause shorts. Get the right tool. The home button is made of the same material as he screen, it’s like a mini screen but much smaller. I am pretty sure when I flex the screen to pry it off that that is what caused it to break. It might be the pinches and stress I put on the ribbon too. I am not 100% sure.
2. Do not put any tension on the ribbons attaching the screen to the body. One of the middle ones has a right angle and any tension can cause a tear. I think this is what really broke the home button. I was not smart and simply let the screen hang off the right side which put a lot of tension on the ribbon causing a small tear.
3. When gently removing the battery adhesive, pull directly away from the battery, as little angle as possible. The last one snapped and I had to bend the battery enough to regrip the adhesive with some tweezers.
4. The good news is that Apple now includes a screen based home button under the accessibility options so the phone is still 100% usable but has a weird home button that you can move around and looks a bit weird. It works well though.
5. You have to hard reset the phone to get the touch screen to work again. I wish I had known this because I think the home button was working but the touch screen was not. I reopened it to check the touchscreen connections and I think in my haste and frustration this is where I tore the home button ribbon. After a hard reset the touch screen worked fine, but the home button and finger print sensor no longer did.
