Fix a Broken Home Button on iPhone 3g

Today I discovered that my Home button was no longer working. I've had the phone for a long time, and its been through some rough stuff, in water, dropped, so I doubt I would be able to get a new one from apple, only a few more months on my contract before I can get a new one cheap, so I decided to see if I could repair the home button myself.

This is not a tutorial on how to take apart your iPhone, as there are numerous instructional videos to help with that. This will just help you fix your home button.

What you will need:

-Soldering Iron.
-Solder
-The Smallest Gauge wire you can find. I went with wire thats a little too large,you'll see why.
-The guts to solder you iPhone, Oh no! 

Step 1 Locating the Problem.

 This may not be the same for everyone, so this step will help you determine if my fix will work. 

Once your iPhone is open to the world, look at the back of the screen, near the home button. There should be two metal springy tabs here. These are the contact that go to the phone and tell it when the button is being pressed. In my case there was only 1, the other one had broken off, hence the non functional home button. I actually touched the other intact one on my phone and it broke right off as well. so it was ready to go as well. 

Now if you look at the botton part of your phone you will see two contact pads for where those springs touch, take note of the orientation. You will have to solder them to the correct contacts. Sorry for the blurry pic, it looked good on my camera...

Comments

[nealbo]

I had the exact same problem, got caught in rain, iPhone was soaked. But my solution was a lot less risky! The water had brought dirt with it and settled under the button. Using a simple toothbrush (seriously!), no taking it apart, I was able to fix it. It's a bit fiddly, instructions below:

http://nealbo.hubpages.com/hub/Fix-a-broken-unresponsive-or-sticky-iPhone-Home-Button

[mysteryee]

alternatively you can replace the broken tab with a new one (replacing the entire button assembly). quite cheap. http://www.amazon.com/Screen-Button-Cable-Ribbon-iPhone/dp/B002ZX8NWM/ref=sr_1_2?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1321675173&sr=1-2

[ssari]

tank you very much, now my iphone is thicker because of the wires i used, but it's working...

[pbodnar]

I just got an iphone used on craigslist with the same problem ; a contact was breaking loose on the home button inside, so it was having the obvious problems. At first I tried superglueing one end of it in the hopes the other end would make contact - but the glue interrupted contact, So, I scraped it off, then found my low-temp instant battery powered soldering gun - the coleman - with the carbon tip, and just put a dot of solder on the contact base where the little clip broke off, so the little blob of solder is the same height as the other intact clip. And now it's as good as new. No mess of wires - though a good idea - and no having to heat gun the thing apart to put another home button in. They really should have designed this part differently to allow easier access to change the button. Anyway - this worked well. And still working. I'd put pictures up, but I put it together already and my wife's using it. Better leave well enough alone.

[jb449]

While replacing the battery on my iPhone, I accidentally broke one of the contact clips on the home button ribbon cable. I thought about fixing it using the method your describing, but I was worried that the heat from the soldering iron would melt the screen. Did the soldering mess up the front of the screen at all?

The way I fixed my phone was by breaking the contact pins off the old battery and soldered them to the antenna/jack side of the phone. I basically inverted the contact mechanism.