Chosen Solution
I had someone ask me to repair a phone. She took it somewhere else in town to be fixed and afterwards the Home button as well as both front and rear camera have stopped working. My first inclination was that someone didn’t fully reconnect the cables, but that isn’t the case. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting all connectors, just to check and everything is still the same – No home button or cameras. Any ideas? EDIT: Note, that the camera app does not freeze. It works just fine, except it doesn’t show an image. It won’t snap pictures, but it also doesn’t lock up. I can scroll around through the different camera modes, change settings, etc.
The front camera and home flex are very easy to break if whoever is performing the repair is inexperienced or careless. The front camera isn’t really a big deal, it can be easily replaced and the part doesn’t cost much at all. The home button on the other hand can be a sad story. If the actual home button flex is ripped or damaged (the part that goes from the home button to the connector that’s adhered to the LCD backplate), touch-ID is forever lost (unless something’s changed since I last damaged one, which was years ago). It’s paired with the processor when the phone is first assembled, and as far as I know there’s no way of re-pairing a new replacement button. However, there is the option that what has been damaged is what I like to call the home flex extension cable. This is what the home button connects to, and it is a long ribbon cable that runs along the back of the LCD backplate and then connects to the logic board. This part is also easily replaceable and it costs even less than the front camera flex. The easiest way to know is to simply test the functionality with new parts. If that doesn’t work, then whoever repaired the device has damaged one or several components on the logic board, which is of course also repairable but often more costly.
