About Aaron
I’m Aaron, the founder and lead technician of iBoard Repair. For over a decade, I’ve dedicated myself to advanced iPhone data recovery and board-level microsoldering, recovering data from devices that many shops consider unrecoverable. This page shares how that path began and how the lab was built.
Founder & Lead Technician
The Foundation
I got my start in consumer electronics while working at Best Buy in high school around 2007. At the time, the company put a heavy emphasis on training, performance, and customer service. That environment taught me a lot early on: how to understand what a customer was actually asking for, how to communicate professionally, and how to present the best solution based on their needs.
I also found out pretty quickly that I was highly competitive. I pushed myself to win the daily ranking systems and eventually became one of the top salespeople in the computer and tablet departments. Ironically, when I started there, I still had a flip phone. My first real smartphone came later, after strong sales performance earned me a free Samsung Galaxy S4. That period gave me a strong foundation in communication, professionalism, and customer trust that still shapes how I run iBoard Repair today.
How Repair Took Over
After several years, I moved to Verizon. That was where I started seeing large numbers of broken iPhones up close for the first time, and it sparked my interest in fixing them. I bought my first repair toolkit while there. I was originally planning to buy a $2 toolkit until my boss suggested I "splurge" on the better $12 iCracked drivers. To this day, the flathead screwdriver that came with that kit is still getting daily use.
It did not take long for me to realize that I enjoyed fixing phones more than selling them. Eventually I moved into a cell phone repair shop, where the technical side of my career really began. I started with basic parts replacement, but before long I kept running into devices that did not respond to normal repair methods. I wanted to understand why.
Forged in the "Golden Era" of Logic Board Repair
That curiosity pushed me deeper into board-level troubleshooting at a time when very little was openly taught. I found some of Jessa Jones’, of iPad Rehab, early videos and eventually discovered the technician communities where real board-level repair knowledge was being shared, Facebook groups.
One lucky break in those years was meeting a retired old-school electrical engineer. He taught me the fundamentals: what a capacitor actually does, how to interpret continuity and ground on an iPhone board, how filters differ from capacitors, and how to think about circuits in a more structured way.
I also came into the industry at an ideal time to build real technical depth. The iPhone 5s era brought the U2 charging IC crisis. Then came iPhone 6 Plus touch disease. Then iPhone 7 audio IC failure. At the time, each of these faults was challenging. Looking back now, they were the perfect training ground. Each one forced me to learn diagnosis, board behavior, and microsoldering control in a very focused way.
I purchased new equipment piece by piece, reinvesting the profits from each phone I fixed back into the business. This not only allowed me to keep up with the technical demands of my trade but also helped me to understand, deeply and personally, the value of each tool I use.
That era gave technicians like me a major advantage. We were able to build our knowledge layer by layer, one major failure type at a time, as each generation of iPhone evolved. Today, newer technicians are often forced to jump much more quickly into stacked boards, interposers, and CPU-level work. I was able to grow alongside each stage of iPhone motherboard complexity, and that helped build a deep and strong foundation.
Obsession With Precision
Beyond technical skill, I think obsession with the work is what really sets me apart. Every new iPhone model brings new challenges that require both a sharp mind and a steady hand. I often find myself thinking through complex cases long into the night and again as soon as I wake.
That mindset is beneficial because the stakes are real. My customers are trusting me with irreplaceable photos, videos, messages, and business data. A motherboard can be permanently damaged by a careless technician. That is why I approach every case with focus, patience, and respect for how fragile the process really is.
Severe Cases, Advanced Recovery, and Industry Respect
Over the last decade, my focus narrowed to the cases other shops walk away from: catastrophic water damage, snapped logic boards, failed prior repair attempts, CPU and NAND transfers, and advanced RAM rework.
I regularly take on the jobs that other data recovery labs and board-level shops decline. Well-known names in the repair industry refer the customer to me when they run into a case they cannot complete in-house.
That technical gap in the industry is the entire reason my YouTube channel exists. Those 20,000+ subscribers aren't just casual viewers—they are thousands of other repair shop owners and data lab technicians. I upload unedited, long-form videos of my bench work because the repair industry uses my channel as a classroom. While my clients watch the videos to verify the care their device will receive, other technicians are watching to learn the advanced, high-skilled microsoldering techniques.
Direct, Specialized, and Personally Handled
If your data is important, it cannot be overstated how easily ruined important data chips are by repair shops who do not specialize in microsoldering. If a repair shop uses wording like "it is a 50/50 chance" or "I can try and see...", then you don't want them to just give it their best shot. You want a professional who will not damage your data. If they "need to order tools" or parts, that is a sign that this might be their first time attempting the particular problem. You do not want to risk full data loss with someone who usually fixes screens all day or usually works on disk drives all day. I work on iPhones every day of the year.
When you contact iBoard Repair, you are not calling a general repair shop that outsources difficult work or hard drive company who is only the middle man. You are working directly with the owner and technician performing the board-level recovery.