iPad 6 Wi-Fi Left Antenna Replacement

I didn't find this to be as hard as I had built it up in my mind to be; HOWEVER, saying that I need to say years ago I was the local Nokia service center in my town. But many years ago right after they got rid of analog times. Yeah. A classic installer/repairer mistake when starting something they haven't fixed or installed before is picking up the instructions, flipping through them; maybe even reading a section that is new-then tossing the instructions over the shoulder. "I got this." This usually comes right before something major gets broke. And I can tell you when you try to do it yourself and then mess it up horribly then take it to the repair shop. Well we called that "I can do it myself" syndrome and charged extra to put back together what they brought in in the box. Now knowing all this - I can't stress this enough because I am stupid, stupid, stupid. COVER YOUR SCREEN IN CLEAR BOXING TAPE AND READ ALL THE INSTRUCTION BELOW THROUGH TO THE END BEFORE EVEN ATTEMPTING THIS FIX. Take my advise.

I didn't have an iOpener, so I used a wheat type heat bag. If you do this though, make sure you put a layer of plastic between your Mac and the bag, or you'll get condensation in places you don't want it.

I started out using the iOpener but switched to my wife's hairdryer. A heat gun or hair dryer proved to be much more convenient and is a time saviour. You can heat more and the glue becomes more fluid make the next steps with the opening picks much easier

Use a hair dryer! Watch this vid: https://youtu.be/16GkvjVyOJA It is much easier to do if you heat it from the other side.

I wonder how many people actually wrapped in their iPhone into iOpener and put this "sandwich" into microwave??

I know this is obvious, but backup your iPad with iTunes before you start. I'd also turn off your passcode if you have one.

Ther first time you heat up the iOpener for this repair when its room temperature I had to heat it up for more than 30 seconds. I remember I had to heat it up for around 45 seconds. However, after that when you need to reheat it again during the repair 30 seconds will be enough.

I've been with Samsung for 8 years now!! Never did i have a case on any of my phones My Samsung 8 is 2 months old the case protector around the edge pop off and broke my phone it's like someone put a bullet hole in it

Not everybody has a microwave. You need to state how long and at what temperature in a conventional oven.

Hi, the microware have multiple power 1 to 9, what must be used ?

Regards,

Cedric

May I know the temperate limit about heating iOpener? (maximum 150 degrees Celsius?) thx so much.

I had to heat mine up for more than 30 seconds. After 30 seconds on high it was only warm. It had to keep trying different times and checking it until it got hot. I think the initial time that I put it in for was over a minute.

DO NOT USE IN NON ROTATING MICROWAVE! It will pop a hole. I had it in for 45 seconds the first time. It wasn't very hot inside and I saw it started to leak on the paper towel I put under it. Just a fair bit of advice. I think I will just stick with the heat gun. Loud but useful.

I don't own a microwave.

Its again waterproof when you change iphone 7 battery?

I don't have a microwave???

30 sec at which equivalent watts setting and what temperature does iOpener heats up to for 30 secs. Only just bought it so needs info before using it. Thanks

can i use just ordinary microwave???

If I don't have a microwave then I try to use hot air gun so how many munuts i want to heat ?

I heated mine up for 30 seconds, tested, then again for 30 seconds. It felt adequately hot. Leaving it on the left side, per the instruction, for a minute did not loosen the adhesive. I ended up pulling the suction cup hard enough to shadder the old screen. Moral of the story, I don't think it gets hot enough safely to have an affect.

There is a clear problem here with the heating part using the iopener things....no details are given. Whoever is testing them needs to make it clear - What temperature does it need to be? And for which phone models, because they differ in what's needed. It's only £10-15 for a laser guided temp sensor unit, and the designers/repairers should have one of those already for doing these kinds of repairs. Explaining half a repair, is worse than not explaining at all :-(

I used a hot water bottle, works well as it covers the whole screen and stays hot for longer.

If I may suggest include your microwave wattage so people can get an idea on time for there own

I ended up using a hair dryer. That iOpener thing took forever.

30 seconds sure isn’t cutting it… 45 didn’t get the screen of my iPad air 2 to budge either… even after resting on the ipad for 4 minutes.

60 seconds in the microwave, the iOpener burst.

I’ll get a new one and try once more with heating it 45 seconds and repeat that for 30 minutes like others have said here. If that doesn’t work it’ll have to be the heat gun.

K

Will a hair dryer work for heating the glass?

Yes, as does a heat gun.

I did this repair. I used a hair dryer, I think it works better: gets very hot fast.

If you add clear packaging tape, it will create bubbles and the suction cup will become inefficient. To me it was impossible to remove the glass with the suction cup. Since the glass was very cracked, I had to resort to some tweaking with strong tape and pull the this off.

If your digitizer is shattered, the tape will help, but you’re going to need extra picks. Or a razor blade. See below.

Friendly observation that the image on this step is actually of an older ipad model as the side bezels are far too big. I don't know if that matters to anybody but a noob might see it and think this manual doesn't apply to them. : )

I had the same experience. My glass was cracked all the way to the left side and the suction cup would not pull the glass up. The packaging tape also didn't help. The heat caused it to lift. I finally abandoned the tape, used a heat gun aimed very carefully at each broken piece of the screen. The picks did work with patience, but I just pulled off each broken part of the glass. I also found that pulling up on one broken part while heating in front of me would let the next piece pull up. I continued heating and breaking all the way around. Do the right side last. Took about 1 hour to get it off, and another hour to clean the old glue off the frame. BTW thanks to this web site and all the comments! No way I would have done this without all the help here! I am now clean and waiting for my new digitizer. I couldn't free the battery (below), so I left it powered up, and verified it till worked before throwing away the old glass. Vince

Taping with package tape doesn't work. You'll need a very large piece of tape if you go this route.

Just finished successful repair. I would add this: most folks will be here because of cracked screen. This is not easy; believe the 'complex' rating on this repair. I put tape on my screen because it was badly cracked. This made the suction cup useless, because it just sucked the tape off the scree.n. I used the razor blade technique which worked great, it should be used in the demo, and a good blade should be in the kit.

The iOpener doesn't work because the heat isn't strong enough. I used a hair dryer which proved to be much more efficient.

The iOpener didnt work for me either. seems like it gets hot enough but it must not. I spent 30 min with the iOpener, then tried a hair dryer.

“At least a minute.” Bullshit. Get the iOpener good and hot, place it on the area you’re going to work on clear side down, and cover it with a towel. Walk away for 2 minutes. Make yourself a drink — you’ll need steady hands later.

I've done this with an iOpener and at least in my case, it worked fine. You may have to modify the heating instructions though, since not all microwaves are created equal.

ii i just did this and it took a while but i figured it out it is true this thing doesnt get hot enough BUT heat it 2 times and then the 3rd time when u place it on the ipad put the ipad box on top and then maybe a second ipad on top of the box so it kinda smashes i down but not too much for it to break and then wait for it to turn warm THEN use the succion THEN the gap appears. the glue is super strong on the ipads so yea it will take some time lol

Doesn't work. Perhaps include more copy on exactly how to do it?

The iOpener does not work. It simply it is not hard enough to soften the glue. The heat hair dryer method does not work either.

The goal is simply to weaken the glue enough that you can use your suction cup to open up a tiny gap under the glass, so you can insert an opening pick and slice through the adhesive. It doesn't actually take all that much heat; the picks will do most of the work once you get them in there. iOpeners, hair dryers, heat guns all work fine in my experience—the iOpener is just a bit more foolproof because it won't get hot enough to cook the display panel underneath.

Don't assume anything!! I thought I was pulling on the screen connector and I was pulling on an antenna component instead. Didn't ruin its connection range but I sure remember doing it and now my iPad has a little internal flaw only I'm aware of.

In this picture above, the glass isn't cracked at all so it helps the suction cup to be effective as it is hermetic. With cracked display, it won't work.

Suction cup would not work for me. No amount of heating with iOpener or hair dryer would allow even the slightest gap to form. I ended up looking at some YouTube videos and used a razor blade. I put the razor blade perpendicular to the top glass, right at the edge of the glass and pushed down until the blade went down 1/4". Then heated some more and pried up the glass enough to put in an opening pick. I spent a lot of time working with the suction cup. Glue was just too strong.

The suction cup is useless if your glass is shattered. Use a new, sharp razor blade, and insert it vertically between the edge of the glass and the metal back of the iPad. Don’t worry about pressing too hard — there’s a lip that stops the blade from going in too far and damaging anything. You’ll probably have to do this several times, but eventually the blade will “bite” into the edge of the glass well enough for you to pry it up. Insert a pick underneath the razor, then remove the razor and continue as directed.

After having to read several comments on this screen removal and the clear packing tape, I too have to agree that the tape method does not work well at all if your screen is already shattered. I combined several methods, with lots of patience to remove the screen on my iPad Air 2. What I found it very helpful was the heat gun used for paint removal. The heat gun generates a lot of concentrated heat at lower air velocity, unlike generic hair dryer, so you must be very careful not to ruin the electronics, and risk burning your hands and anything around it. My heat gun that I purchased from Home Depot had a nozzle to direct and focus the heat on a small area. That was helpful in working small area at a time. This method work thoroughly well.

It would work if you leave iopener in microwave for 1 minute.

Don’t trust the instruction from ifixit.

you can put iopener in microwave for 1 minute without any harm.

Note. you have to make sure that it is in cold position before you put it into microwave.

Suction cup didn’t work for me either, went the razor blade route (using an exacto knife blade) with very minimal damage to the aluminum shell. Be warned, if your screen has cracked along the edge (as it almost 100% certainly has if you’re reading this guide), the screen will continue to shatter and splinter as you make your way around the edge. That’s when having the screen taped up well will be to your advantage. There’s also a good chance you’ll have to re-insert the razor blade on the other side of a fracture and start the lifting process again, but keep going, being sure to avoid the points called out in this guide and you should be fine.

Also, do not apply the suction cup to an area of the screen with cracks and no tape. If you’re near the edge you run the risk of brutally shattering that area of the glass if the glass gives before the suction cup.

In order to get this to work for me I had to heat the IOpener to over 104 C - I needed to get the screen over 40 C before the adhesive would loosen.

Also I had to put the ipad on a towel - the granite countertop it was on was sucking the heat out too fast.

This step was brutal on my nerves - read about too many people ruining their iOpener and I don’t have a heat gun. I had to keep heating the iOpener incrementally hoping I wouldn’t pop it. … but if you’re patient, persistent, and cautious, you can definitely tell when you’re seeing separation. The iOpener ended up being WAY hotter than 30 seconds was getting me - borderline scorching my hands.

How do you slide the picks when the glass is broken? Even with the glass taped, it pulls away from the tape rather than the housing. I've just further shattered the glass with my attempts.

This gives a false illusion to the difficulty of these repairs when you guys make guides using perfect devices. What about devices with dinged corners? A reader is gonna slap on a new screen and shatter it the second they apply pressure thinking it will fit into a dented corner lol

I managed to get a couple of fingerprints on the LCD.

What's the best way to clean 'em off?

What's the safest way?

What I’ve read, and seems to work, is gentle circular pressure with a very clean, dry microfiber cloth. Lacking that, use a TINY drop of water ON THE CLOTH, not on the LCD. Small amounts of alcohol can be used, in my experience, but only if the above don’t work, and with better results if used in small amounts and applied to the cloth, not the LCD.

My digitizer WAS ok and I was only replacing the battery I wasn't careful enough when coming around the side with the pics and got a hold of the cable just enough with the pic to pull it off the underside of the panel. The battery replacement went great other than now I have to replace the digitizer. :(

BE CAREFUL WITH THIS STEP!!!

And if you are replacing the digitizer, you have to reuse the fingerprint sensor home button. I sliced through mine and now I’ll not have fingerprint sensor. Each home button is matched to the main board and if switched out you will loose that sensor ability.

I think you’re missing a step here where you explicitly direct the reader to slide the pick from the bottom right corner towards the home button.

You will end up having to scrape the outter ledge to remove the old screen. I bled and got glass shards everywhere. Good luck!

my replacement digitizer has rigid flex with adhesive tape where the connectors extend. how does this “fold” back inside the frame?

Both of the iPad 6th gen models i have seen so for (note they were cellular also) had the LCD secured with a grey silicone kind of adhesive in each corner under the screws. So you can’t just lift the LCD as you normally would after removing screws, it would break. I found you could pick at the corner closest to the rear camera easiest, slightly lift that corner and gently separate the other side next to the headphone jack. Then while supporting the LCD , lever the other end free with a up-and-down motion making slight progress each time.