Part 2 of my story. Unexpectedly during the reassembly the screw for the loud speaker fell out. My phone isn’t the original one I bought. It was an Apple replacement they gave me when I had 2 recalls on the original phone. It came in a slim plain white. I suspect this was a factory refurbished phone the Apple stores keep in store for warranty replacements.

My next big issue is that after the first recharge a third party battery health app was showing my battery only had 28% capacity. I thought I got sold a dud and was about to return the battery. But after the second recharged it showed 100% capacity and after a week or 2 the phone seems to be running as normal.

The Antutu benchmark score is 61096. I don’t know if that is good or not. I didn’t get to benchmark the phone with the old battery. But my impression is that the phone works fine. Not as fast as my iPhone SE but it is usable especially for a spare phone that may become totally obsolete in the future. Only time will tell.

Ultimately this upgrade was a success for me but it wasn’t without a few issues. May have to split this over a few comments. This was a small project for me since my main phone is an iPhone SE plus the latest iOS won’t run on iPhone 5 so no use spending money for Apple to replace the battery. Trade in price from Apple is only $15 so not worth giving it to them.

Disassembly was straight forward. I had used the phone pry to opening to drain the battery plus warm it up from the inside outside. Battery came up without a hitch.

Reassembly was difficult and at one stage I thought I had killed the phone. I thought I had broken something as the screen would not turn on. I then disconnected and reconnected the screen and a row of small grey boxes appeared on the top. Inconvenient but usable. Strange thing is after about a day the boxes disappeared so possibly the heat from using the phone helped the cable connectors settle into the slot.

Continue to part 2 ->

I was using the phone beforehand watch YouTube videos to make sure the phone and battery was warm before opening. Didn’t have much trouble getting the battery out.

I rushed in and did steps 13 to 16 without reading the warning. There were some unexpected events that happen. The short version of this story is my screen comes up with funny looking grey squares but phone is still usable. I don’t care as my main phone is an iPhone SE and I bought the battery as a learning exercise. Plus iOS 11 doesn’t install on an iPhone 5 so it’s days are numbered as a productivity tool.

Long version. Dissemble was easy. I made sure I had used the phone so the battery was warmed up . First problem with reassembly is in step 13 the bottom most 1.2mm wasn’t biting and screwing in. So it looked like the top of the hole got threaded. Also a screw fell out of what I think is the loud speaker. That was unexpected. This iPhone 5 isn’t my original, it was a replacement phone that came in a white phone that the Apple Store gave me when my original phone from 2012 had 2 recalls on it. So I strongly suspect this is a factory refurbished phone and not 100% mint off the line.