Wasup! I've been slacking for the past few months, but it doesn't mean I haven't collected any "gems" from my workshop.
First one is my least favorite type of repair: when you get good stuff abused at construction sites and auto repair shops.
This one wasn't really that filthy, but had no sound (not muffled, but fully absent). At first I thought the audio codec was dead, but then I found out the real reason....
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Few careful minutes with a powerful neodymium magnet and it came back to its original state with "full range of sound", or at least as much as those puny Dell latitude speakers can muster.
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And the next one is definitely the worst. Combines two things that I whole-heartedly hate - stupidity and lies.
My buddy's nephew sent over his Pixel 5a. Said "it was working fine, but all of a sudden rebooted and never came back to life". Looking at it, I immediately suspected water damage because the lens cover was foggy. Called him to ask some clarifying questions - and as far as I've gotten is "maybe I walked in the rain with it". Then I opened the poor little bastard to see if maybe it's just a faulty charging port or charge controller, and to my surprise I saw this:
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Everything was soaked and dead. Not even a single part can be reused as donor. Come to find out he jumped in the lake with it.
Still don't understand why people almost always lie when it comes to liquid damage.... Either they don't want to look stupid, or maybe they think that if they believe it hard enough - the damage will go away somehow. Seen and heard this on many occasions, both with phones and beer-soaked laptops. Only had a few customers(regulars) that weren't ashamed to admit they made a whoopsie, which saved both my time and their time.