Chosen Solution
I was replacing the back of an iPhone 7 Plus for a friend cus he bananad his phone. After a really clean disassembly and assembly right before I put the last two Shields on (by the camera for the lcd connector and the other by the battery pin connector) I wanted to make sure the phone would power up. It Turned it on but… I turned the phone off like normal and in the process of putting on the last shield (by the battery pin connector) I dropped a screw on the bored and saw a little spark (yes, I forgot to disconnect the battery for this last step!) . Seeing that scared the $#!t out of me so instead of finishing what I was doing i tried to turn on the phone and nothing. No power, no life at all. Please tell me it’s an easy cheap fix!
It really depends on where the screw fell as there are several zones of exposed components. At this point, there is not much that is DIY repairable at the logic board level so you should have this looked at by a tech that does micro-soldering repairs.
It depends on how good you are on repairing chips. it is pretty difficult to locate and fix the problem without the proper tools and experience.
This is most likely going to be just a backlight problem, and you aren’t the only one who has done this exact same thing—-we have two other iPhone 7’s here right now with the EXACT same history “I dropped a screw and now no backlight”
To confirm, you can disconnect battery, reconnect, press to boot up (you won’t see anything) and then confirm that iTunes recognizes the phone (which means that it has booted, but just has no display)
If that is the case, then you’ll need to send the phone in to your local microsolderer or mail in repair service for a backlight repair.
If iTunes does NOT recognize the phone, then it is less clear. It is unlikely that dropping a screw would kill anything other than backlight, so we have the variables of a prior bent board (which can itself be problematic) and the possibility of other technician pry damage that maybe you’re unaware of. Also on the list is flex cable damage and dead screen coincidental with the dropped screw.
First see if iTunes recognizes it—-then you’ll know this is a classic iPhone 7 backlight presentation.
