Samsung Note 9: Water Damage & Botched Prior Repair Recovery

This completely dead Samsung Note 9 was mailed to our lab from another repair shop along with a desperate letter. The device was initially water-damaged, and the previous shop had held it for 3 months trying to fix it. Unsuccessful and with a panicked customer wanting their data, they finally outsourced the board-level repair to us.

Connecting the bare motherboard to our DC power supply revealed a rapid 600mA current draw upon prompting to boot, followed by a hard shutoff. Using our thermal camera, we immediately spotted a heat signature near the rear camera circuit.

Upon removing the board shields, the extent of the prior technician’s botched attempt was clear. A shield had been soldered back on crookedly, a capacitor was physically shorting out to the ground plane, and a BGA chip was completely mangled from improper heat application.

• Clearing the Botched Repair: We first removed the crooked shield and corrected the shorted capacitor that was touching the ground plane.
• Component Isolation: Even after fixing the previous technician’s mistakes, a deep short remained on the U9001 Sub-PMIC (which handles camera and proximity voltages).
• IC Harvesting & Reballing: We safely removed the internally shorted sub-PMIC. Finding no direct replacements available, we sourced a healthy chip from a donor Note 9 motherboard, fully reballed it using a high-precision stencil, and prepared the customer’s board.
• Installation: We installed the reballed U9001 IC, completely clearing the 600mA short circuit