iPhone 15 Pro Storage Expansion – 128GB to 512GB [video]

The video omits crucial details aside from the physical act of removing the original and soldering the new NAND. I know for a fact failing to copy original details results in failure to restore iOS with specific error codes, so I wonder what this video did. I&#x27;ve successfully done this many times back in the iPhone 6S days where the original chip was desoldered, read by a Chinese-made reader, and finally the identifiers cloned to the new chip. I sold phones upgraded from 16GB to 128GB for a meager profit, but it was for fun.<p>How can the new chip work if the original chip is milled off completely? I would be surprised if you could read all necessary identifiers through iOS&#x2F;USB software before milling unless the device was jailbroken and read that way. Seems like a big oversight for Apple not to implement simple countermeasures to make it a little bit harder, or that Apple would undo protections they had back in the iPhone 6S days.

Me, watching video: so now they&#x27;re going to desolder the original flash chip, put it into a chip programmer and copy data to the new one, resizing the file system as needed.<p>They: <i>casually proceed to turn the original chip into fine dust</i>

The care taken can only be described as mesmerizing. If you want proof that Apple is full of it and the whole &quot;bootleg parts can compromise security,&quot; then here it is. Apparently, a lid close sensor is a major security risk - where NAND is not?

Cool. Haven&#x27;t seen anyone doing precision chip removal with a CNC mill&#x2F;router before, but it makes sense for this situation and was done well. :)

This is cool, no doubt about that. And fascinating due to the sheer complexity and amount of fine detail work required. But. Uh. For all that work, Why not upgrade it to an amount of storage you couldn’t otherwise get? Or at least max it out?

I started watching this assuming that the nand is either slotted in or would be de-sodered. Then the micrometer scale calibration gauges for the milling machine came out and I realized what was about to happen. Quality work!

This is a joy to watch.<p>And this person had better stay anonymous. If Apple knew their identity, they&#x27;d be excommunicated on the spot.

This is the new upgrade status quo. I wouldn’t do it on a phone but some hot air work on a MacBook to upgrade the SSD would not scare me at all. I did do board rework a long time ago though.<p>What does scare me is the software side of doing a change like that!

At 5 minutes is when it shifts gears from the merely brave&#x2F;experienced.

I once tried to replace a screen on an iPhone, and accidentally knocked a barely visible capacitor next to the connector right off the board. When I say barely visible, I’m not exaggerating. I did try to solder it back onto the board under a microscope with my cheap reflow station, but it was absolutely futile. Which is to say, as difficult as this video looks, this is being done by a person who has done similar things many times, and you’re very unlikely to be successful at this the first time around. Tread carefully.

This is impressive, but... what is so terrible about a Micro SD slot? Knowing, of course, that Apple products don&#x27;t have one as a rule but my current (cheap) Android phone still does, and storage expansion is a matter of spending $30 at Costco.

Cool, anybody doing that to macbooks, which are much more storage constrained?

Why did he mill the NAND rather than removing it using his hot air station?

GPU, Phones and Laptops are going to get chip modded. Chip modding was the process of making game consoles run any copied game. So modders would chip modify them to bypasss console manufacturers copy protection. Since other manufacturers are now selling memory expansion at highers margin rate there are going to be chip soldering possibilities.<p>Wikipedia modchip <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modchip" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Modchip</a>

Super impressive to watch, person clearly knows what they’re doing.<p>But saving $200 to then need to expend this effort seems hardly worth it, never mind that it likely voids the warranty.<p>Maybe if it was already a few years old it might be worth it.<p>I suspect the video is to show off expertise rather than advertise this as a particular service they could economically offer.

I would have assumed as per previous iphone models that they needed to desolder the nand and put it into jc pro or similar in order to clone it to the new nand. Interesting that they just grind the old one off and do a dfu restore. I wonder what was done for that process.

What a lot of mucking about. With a microSD card it&#x27;s done in seconds.<p>It only took me several seconds to put a 512GB SD card in my Moto phone.

Can an iPhone work as an iPod with better screen&#x2F;storage&#x2F;battery, if the LTE radio is removed?

What&#x27;s going on around 7:40 when it looks like something is being vaporized onto the new chip?

Can he do the same on my GPU?

This is ridiculous Apple should just include a microSD slot. Who even uses 512GB of storage on a phone? It&#x27;s a stupid way to try to rip off the wealthy.