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| Interior of my iPhone 8 with battery removed. |
I ordered the replacement battery and a toolkit from ifixit.com a few weeks ago. I have just been waiting for a quiet weekend to do this.
I followed online instructions and videos from ifixit.com to complete the change.
So many tiny parts! I am sure that 16-year-old me would have had no trouble seeing the little screws and little cable connectors, but I don't think he would have had the patience to try again and again.
At one point I accidentally punctured the battery with my scraper. It sparked and released some smoke. As I continued to scrape it sparked a few more times. The battery is outside on the concrete driveway now. I will have to responsibly dispose of it tomorrow.
I was not able to get the Taptic Engine reconnected to the logic board. The only deficit this causes is that the phone does not shake and buzz when a notice comes in, it does not click when the Home button is pressed, and it does not shake when the charging plug is connected to it. This is a haptic feedback mechanism. Since I am only using this phone like an iPod, I really do not need it.
After I got the phone reassembled I did a hard start up, and I was astonished to see the white Apple logo light up the screen! There were so many ways this could have gone wrong, but it went mostly right!
Hopefully this gives me a few more years of enjoyment and use out of this old iPhone.
