[samstave]

That is awesome! I wish ifixit would train some people to do this.

I have an iPhone 4s that is "the kids phone" for my two-year old so she can watch YouTube and Netflix. I'd love to upgrade that so I could put all the other movies she likes on there as well.

[devy]

Yup. Equipments and tools aside, the BGA IC chip soldering / desoldering skills you've seen fast forwarded through the clip are some serious skills that take time to practices.

PS: This technique has been around since April 2015. A Youtube search yields roughly 8000 videos. I wouldn't be surprised that there are dozens or even hundreds [1] of this "repair shops" in Shenzhen's huaqiangbei or Beijing's Zhongguancun [2] electronics market.

There was even a similar video tutorial made by iFixit Vietnam;) [3]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iphone+nand+fla...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongguancun

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQFpay9HgEk (by iFixit.vn)

[yuvadam]

That usually requires significant soldering experience with SMT components and can possibly require soldering a BGA which is crazy hard (up to impossible) if you're not a machine.

[devy]

Yup! The technicians shown in the video said they usually have around 50 "upgrades" a day done in the shop and this techniques has been around since April 2015.

Worst comes to be worst, Huaqiangbei has tons of vendors who sell iPhone scrape parts so an accidental damage can be easily "replaced" and fixed up.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the technicians were Foxconn trained workers.

[samstave]

Are you in China? (This is not a criticism) your grammar sounds as though you may be Chinese.

I wonder how many people in the China tech scene read HN?

[devy]

Yes English grammar isn't my strongest suit. But no, I am stateside.

Fortunately, HN + Github are accessible free within China so I wouldn't be surprised there are significant Chinese engineers using these sites daily.

Write Sam Altman a nice email, he may just tell you the detail stats to answer your question directly ;)

[techolic]

I'm in China but I can only speak for me - I read HN everyday.

[john_reel]

Sounds like a native speaker to me.