Rabbi Natan Wolf is the owner and head technician at Wolf Phone Repairs in Hewlett, New York
Regular iPhone screens, with a small device that transfers screen data from the original to the replacement — it retains True Tone functionality. The toughest is a liquid-damaged device — it’s usually not worth repairing for the device itself, only for data recovery. Repairing the motherboard of a water-damaged device just for data recovery is still a hard fix, because you have to figure out what needs replacing. The actual work is skilled and difficult, but to be honest, it’s also the most fun. Also, a device with a cracked housing or motherboard is often not worth repairing — those should go in the spare parts or recycling pile.
Anyone who needs devices fixed. For schools, it’s usually repairing the laptops and tablets students use. For businesses, it’s devices employees use for work — a lot of these need to have dying batteries replaced, cracked screens fixed, or just some TLC. For my commercial clients, I’m busy with devices for resale, from computers that aren’t producing image or sound, to trackpads that don’t work, to phones that are locked from buyers who returned them without removing their accounts — the list is endless.
Usually from dropping it or dropping something onto it. So many people forget their phones on their laps as they get out of the car — that’s a common one. But some are really out there. Someone once brought a seriously destroyed iPhone. It was basically bent in half — he dropped it as he was closing his car door, and it got slammed in the door. Or the time I got a 27-inch iMac that had been impaled and crushed by heavy machinery — I’d never seen anything like that! The logic board was intact and functioning, though it needed a whole new housing, stand, and screen. Sometimes I’ll get devices from commercial clients where I don’t hear a backstory, but they look bizarre, like iPads bent in half or huge dents in strong aluminum casings. I have no idea how these happen, the sheer amount of force it would take to cause such damage, but I don’t ask questions.
Nothing formal on my part. I’m fully self-taught in repairing electronics, as well as in soldering and board level repair. I’ve been taking apart computers and electronics since I was about seven years old. Over 11 years ago, a friend in yeshivah asked me to fix his iPhone 4 screen. I figured, Why not? although I’d never done anything like it. I didn’t have the proper tools or setup, so it took me about four hours — most of which was spent searching for the incredibly tiny screws I kept dropping. Word got out that I could fix phones, and it took off from there. Now there are online resources for electronics repair, but back then there wasn’t much information available, or schematics, so it was a good deal of trial and error.
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