Replacing a Loud speaker in an iPhone 3G

May 11th, 2010

Changing the iPhone 3G loudspeaker is a major pain! This speaker is the one opposite to the microphone with the charging port in between. Not to be confused with the handset speaker that’s normally used in telephone calls.

To change the speaker first you have to split the phone to pieces. You start by sticking a pin in the sim card slot to pop-out the sim. Also power down the phone. Remove the two screws to the left and right of the charging port. Using a plastic prying tool pop up the LCD screen and separate it from the iPhone’s outer metal chassis ring. This can be a pain. There are alternative methods involving suction cups, you can Google for tutorials or Youtube it and see what others do. I used a plastic prying tool which is much like a flathead, but is better because it won’t cause cosmetic damage to your iTelephone. There is a small rubber gasket which keeps a seal around the LCD to the metal frame. This was getting stuck for me making the thing harder to disassemble. There is a small opening below the glass right above where the screws are so these are the points where you want to pry up. Do it slowly because the other side contains ribbon cables from the lcd and digitizer. You will remove these next. The digitizer which is the smallest of the ribbons coming from the lcd needs to be taken out differently. Lift up the black clip on the connector on the board so that its 90 degrees, then the ribbon should come out easily.

To remove the speaker you have to remove the metal chassis ring, to remove that you have to remove all the screws attaching that and all the PCB mainboard screws. Once you get to the speaker. You will realize its a pain to swap it out with a new one. First you have to remove the charging port from it. That’s soldered on to a ribbon coming out of the speaker. De-solder this. Next slowly peal off the GSM antenna sticker which is thin like a ribbon cable. This thing has a contact which goes through the speaker housing to the other side. Don’t damage this! Do all this in reverse order to put it all back with the new speaker.

If you damage the GSM antenna, its contact point or don’t reinstall it properly, your Apple iTelephone will not have good coverage if any and will suffer.