Crushed iPhone 15 Pro: “Unfixable” Board, Data Still Recovered
- Aaron Harrington
- 11 hours ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 54 minutes ago
This iPhone 15 Pro came in completely crushed; believed to have been run over by a car. By the time it reached my bench at iBoard Repair, the screen was gone, the two-layer motherboard “sandwich” was already separated, and the device was totally dead.
Multiple shops had already looked at it. A thermal camera check at one of those shops suggested a RAM short. On modern iPhones, the RAM is stacked directly on top of the CPU, which means a RAM short is essentially the hardest type of data recovery you can perform.
This case study walks through the full, nearly six-hour repair: confirming the RAM short, rebuilding the logic board around the original CPU, harvesting donor RAM, and finally extracting the customer’s data.
Case Summary
Device: iPhone 15 Pro
Problem: Severe physical crush damage, no power, suspected RAM short after multiple failed repair attempts by other shops
Goal: Data-only recovery (photos, videos, messages)
Outcome: 100% of recoverable data successfully extracted
Watch the Full Repair
👉 Watch the full repair on YouTube (with comments & chapters): https://youtu.be/Kmww5t3QW7s
Step 1: Confirming the RAM Short
Before tearing anything else apart, I needed hard electrical proof of what was actually wrong beyond what a thermal camera showed.
Abnormal Power Draw
I started by connecting the board to a DC power supply. A healthy iPhone logic board usually starts around 0.06 A and then ramps up in stages as it boots.
This board jumped immediately to a steady 0.36 A draw as soon as I prompted it to boot.
That kind of flat, elevated draw points to a serious short on one of the main power rails.
Probing the Power Rails
Next, I checked the rails feeding the CPU and RAM:
1V8 (1.8 V) rail: Reading normally
0V5 (0.5 V) rail: Reading normally
1V1 rail (RAM power line): This should read around 1.05 V, but was stuck at an abnormally low 0.88 V
To confirm, I injected 1.1 V directly into the 1V1 line. A healthy line at its native voltage should pull nearly zero amps. This line pulled about 0.3 A by itself.
That kind of draw is a classic sign of a partial RAM short inside the RAM/CPU stack.
Step 2: Scraping the RAM Off the CPU
You cannot simply heat and lift the RAM off an iPhone 15 Pro CPU. Doing so will usually destroy the CPU underneath, permanently losing the customer’s data keys.
Instead, under high magnification, I used a razor blade to painstakingly scrape the RAM away, layer by microscopic layer.
Every pass has to be very controlled
One slip can gouge the CPU and kill the job entirely
After hours of careful scraping, the RAM was completely removed, leaving a flat CPU surface ready to be reballed and moved to a donor board.
Step 3: Ruling Out the PMIC
A full CPU swap is one of the most risky and time-consuming repairs possible. I always rule out simpler fixes first.
Because the 1V1 rail is an output from the PMIC (Power Management IC), there was a small chance the PMIC itself was the problem.
I pulled a known-good PMIC from a donor board
Reballing it and installing it onto the crushed board
The result?
The 1V1 line stayed stuck at ~0.89 V
The board still showed the same abnormal current draw on the DC power supply
The PMIC was doing its job. The low voltage was definitely associated with the CPU, not the PMIC. At that point, the only path forward was to swap the CPU and redo the RAM.
Step 4: CPU Swap and Data Chip Transfer
With the RAM removed, the next step was to rebuild the phone on a known-good donor board while keeping all of the original data-critical chips.
Moving the Original CPU
I removed the original CPU from the crushed board
Cleaned all underfill and prepared both the original and donor boards
Reballing the CPU and transferring it to a prepared iPhone 15 Pro donor board
The Moment of Truth
After installing the CPU on the donor board, I checked the 1V1 rail again.
It now read 1.05 V — right where it should be
That confirmed the original CPU survived the crush damage and was still good for data recovery.
Transferring the NAND and EEPROM
To make the donor board behave exactly like the original phone, I also needed to move the main data chips:
NAND (main flash storage with the customer’s data)
EEPROM (logic/configuration chip that helps decrypt and tie everything together)
Both chips were:
Pulled from the original damaged board
Cleaned and reballed
Installed onto the donor board alongside the original CPU
On this model, Apple used slightly different NAND footprints, so I had to clear some nearby ground components on the donor board to give the larger package safe clearance. It’s a small detail, but important for long-term reliability and to avoid stress on the solder joints.
The reconstructed donor board now carried:
Original CPU
Original NAND
Original EEPROM
The last missing piece was a good, working RAM chip.
Step 5: Harvesting and Reballing Donor RAM
Because iPhone 15 Pro RAM chips aren’t easily sourced, I had to manually harvest one by doing a “reverse scrape”.
Reverse Scrape: Freeing the Donor RAM
I took a separate working donor board
Ripped the CPU stack off that board
This time, I scraped the CPU away from the bottom side until only the thin RAM chip remained
Again, this is slow, delicate work. Flex the RAM too much and it’s unusable.
The Stencil Problem
I didn’t have the exact iPhone 15 Pro RAM stencil on hand, so I used an iPhone 13 RAM stencil as the closest match.
The holes didn’t line up perfectly
The solder balls came out uneven in height
Uneven balls on a stacked RAM chip are a big problem. Some pads connect, others don’t, and the chip will either fail outright or behave unpredictably.
Manually Flattening the Solder Balls
To fix this, I had to get a bit creative:
Reflow the solder onto the RAM through the imperfect stencil
Place the reballed RAM face down on a sheet of paper
Gently grind it in small circles with my fingertip, sanding down the tallest solder balls
Repeat this reflow-and-grind cycle multiple times until the balls were as flat and even as possible
This became the most tedious part of the entire repair and a real test of patience, but it was critical for a reliable connection when the RAM was stacked back on top of the CPU.
Installing the Donor RAM
Once I was satisfied with the ball height:
I aligned the harvested RAM directly over the original CPU
Gently heated the area until the solder flowed and the RAM settled into place
After cooling, I checked the relevant RAM lines with a multimeter — no shorts, and healthy readings.
Now the donor board had:
Original CPU
Original NAND
Original EEPROM
Good donor RAM, properly reballed and installed
Time to see if it would actually boot.
Step 6: First Boot and Data Extraction
With the rebuilt board ready, it was time to power up and see what survived.
First Boot Behavior
On the DC power supply:
The board finally showed a normal looping boot pattern instead of a flat, abnormal draw
The Apple logo appeared on the screen
At first, the phone stalled at the Apple logo, which is never fun to see after this much work.
Forcing a System Update
To push it through:
I forced the phone into Recovery Mode
Connected it to a computer and ran a system update (not a restore)
After the update:
The phone bypassed the stuck Apple logo
Reached the “Swipe up to recover” screen
Then the passcode screen appeared normally
At that point, I could confirm that:
Photos
Videos
Messages
and the rest of the customer’s personal data were intact and accessible.
Despite being crushed, disassembled by other shops, and suffering a severe RAM short, 100% of the important data was successfully extracted.
Nerd Corner: Tech Notes for Repair Shops
For B2B partners and techs who like hard numbers:
Initial Symptoms
Dead, crushed iPhone 15 Pro
Two-layer board already separated by a previous shop
Power Supply Behavior
Prompt-to-boot current draw: ~0.36 A flat instead of ~0.06 A stepping up
Rail Measurements
1V8 and 0V5 rails: normal
1V1 (RAM power): ~0.88 V instead of ~1.05 V
Voltage Injection
1.1 V injected on 1V1 pulled ~0.3 A, confirming a partial short
PMIC Validation
PMIC swap did not change the 1V1 reading or behavior → fault confirmed in the RAM/CPU stack
CPU / Data Chips
Original RAM fully scraped off with razor
Original CPU reballed and moved to donor
Original NAND + EEPROM transferred; larger NAND footprint required clearing nearby ground components
Donor RAM
Harvested by reverse-scraping CPU from donor
Reballed using an iPhone 13 RAM stencil
Ball height manually corrected via repeated reflow + paper grinding until even
Final Boot Behavior
Normal looping current on DC power supply
Apple logo → Recovery Mode → system update → “Swipe up to recover” → passcode → full data access
Common Questions About iPhone 15 Pro Data Recovery
"My iPhone 15 Pro is completely dead. Can you still recover the data?”
In many cases, yes.
If the damage is limited to the logic board, there is a good chance the data can be recovered by moving the CPU, NAND, and related chips to a known-good donor board and rebuilding the core of the phone just long enough to boot.
Every case is different, but even crushed, run-over, or “unfixable” boards are often still candidates for data-only recovery.
“Why can’t a normal phone repair shop do this?”
Most phone shops stop at:
Screen, battery, and charge port replacement
Some basic board-level fixes
This job required:
Manual RAM removal on top of the CPU
CPU reballing and transfer
NAND and EEPROM transfers
Donor RAM harvesting and reballing
Complex two-layer board handling
That’s specialized microsoldering work with dedicated equipment and experience specifically in CPU/RAM stack repairs.
“Do you need my passcode?”
Yes.
For pure data recovery, I don’t care about the passcode itself, but I do need it to:
Confirm the phone is booting
Unlock the device to trust and access your data (photos, videos, messages, etc.)
“Is the phone usable again after a repair like this?"
Generally, no.
These extreme repairs are treated as data-only jobs. The goal is to make the phone boot long enough to copy your data, not to return a structurally sound, reliable daily-use phone.
In heavy crush cases, the housing, screen, and other components are usually in rough shape, so it doesn’t make sense to treat it as a normal “repair.”
Start Your iPhone 15 Pro Data Recovery
If you have an iPhone 15 / 15 Pro / 15 Pro Max that has been:
Crushed or run over
Declared “unfixable” by other shops
Stuck dead after severe board damage or suspected CPU/RAM issues
…there’s still a real chance your data can be recovered.
I operate a dedicated data recovery lab in Riverside County, CA and accept mail-in devices from customers and repair shops across the United States.
How to get started:
Fill out your device details and describe the damage
Ship your phone using the instructions provided
Once it arrives, I’ll perform board-level data recovery similar to what you’ve seen in this case.
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