Dust warning:

The only part where dust would be very annoying would be on the camera lenses. When reassembling, I made sure that there were no dust particles on the inside of the backplate or on the camera lens itself. You won't be able to clean that out once you seal your phone again!

One more thing:

Water resistance testing

There is an app that may be a safe way to see if your reassembly is good enough to quality for water resistance: https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...

Basically it uses the barometer in the phone to determine this. If your phone is a closed system, pressing on the screen should cause the pressure to increase from baseline, as there are no gaps for air to leave.

If your phone is an open system with a leak, pressure on the screen will be released through the leak in the phone's side, meaning water could easily enter from that same spot. The air pressure will not change with a leak.

This app was in fact the way I discovered my adhesive was splitting. I ran it for fun before going to the beach, where to my surprise it showed a failure. Previously it did not! I have no financial interest in this app, I just like it and I purchased the add-on which is not necessary for the app to function. I use it to test any refurb.

Con't:

I disconnected the battery and exposed the sticky battery side of my 2 strips of tesla tape. I put the battery against the bottom, where I knew the wire would be in the proper position. The battery adhered and I reconnected the wire.

Hope this helps everyone else!

Con't:

For the battery adhesive and replacement:

It was unclear just how tightly the battery needed to be re-adhered. Is it really going to shake around that much? But I figured we don't want anything jostling or pulling on the thin battery connector cable.

I used a spudger to VERY gently work the old adhesive off all 4 sides. It looks like there are wires/trace running through the underlying foil-like surface, so you probably do not want to damage that in any way. Also the screen is right underneath that!

I cut 2 strips only of the included tesla tape and stuck that on the 2 long sides. I did not expose the battery side tape yet.

VERY IMPORTANT: Put the battery in and connect the wire. The ifixit battery is smaller than the OEM, so there is a lot of possible movement. The wire also wasn't exactly perpendicular. In fact, it took some finagling to get the wire to actually connect. I found that in my case, the battery was seated right at the bottom/base of the compartment for the wire to sit properly.

Con't:

When placing the ifixit backplate adhesive, you must be VERY precise when setting down your first edge. The backplate has some curvature, and you want the edge of the first edge to be JUST inside that curve. Then slowly press down the sticker until the other long end seats down. You want to make sure you push from the middle to the other edge, so that it will align on that curvature instead of just straight down.

The instructions are correct--you really only get 1 chance to place it. You can game this, though, by only gently pressing on the thin strips at first. If you push on the top end near the camera, any large surface area adhesive will stick down and you will not be unsticking it!

Some final tips for anyone else about to attempt this:

It was unclear just how much of the residual adhesive to remove from both the back plate and the phone frame. Would leaving just a little affect the seal? I eventually realized (probably later than most) the back plate adhesive is a large cutout sticker, exactly the same as the ifixit provided one. If you can pull up a small edge and have access to some small clamping forceps (hemostat for medical folks), you can use this to slowly peel off the sticker all the way around. There are 2 small 'islands' of adhesive you will need to peel off separately. Removing all of this from the backplate is definitely needed, otherwise attaching a sticker of adhesive onto the old one will be too thick.

For the phone frame, I used the spudger to push around some adhesive but didn't worry too much about it. It is harder to aggressively work on this side as all the adjacent electronics are sensitive.

For future reference, I purchased mine in late 7/2023 and the date stamped on the battery was 5/19/23.

Very valuble tip, thank you! I was going to douse it with probably way more than needed.

I started just with some moderate force jimmying it with the black plastic spudger. I then applied just a few drops of isopranol 90% and the bottom section loosened very easily.

In my phone there was a lot of residual adhesive on the top section, so I initially just flapped it over like a hinge while I finished the other steps. For me, I found, and it should be emphasized, for the reinstall, the top edge needs to be placed flat and snapped UP into the chassis for it to fit.

Interesting observation! I did not see this comment until after I reassembled the midframe and closed everything, so I can not confirm. If true, I either got lucky or it didn't matter.