yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Cool, thank you!

But this guy uses some equipment I simply don't have ;) I think unsoldering might be an issue without a preheater by causing too much stress only with a heatgun. Cleaning and reballing could work, and while the actual reflow shouldn't be a problem as I have access to an actual reflow oven, I have no idea how I could make sure that the chip is properly positioned.

At least, there's some good news regarding the chip - it finally turned up today. :good: So r now, I'll continue trying to find somebody to perform the soldering job for me, at least for some days.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
your welcome

From experience I had, if the stencil on the pcb/bga had been applied correctly, the chip will find is position from itself. But visual control is really difficult. The way I use, the two or three time I did this, was with a special micro-camera which could see the bga pads until soldered.

Also in the 3ds mod, afaik, he finally ask a enterprise to reflow the chip. But can't remember the cost.

Also if you had time and some electronic skill you can take a look at hack a day [1][2], there is some interesting reflow-oven diy design, maybe it can help ;) and.....

Good luck!!!
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] draykfyre:
So I tried again with a fresh motherboard and fresh chip, because I tried a cheap stencil from Ebay that was the right layout, and even with the stencil reballing was just miserable. I'm so glad I'm in software development, and not repairing these for a living :)

I'm pretty sure I killed the chip or something else(again). I can get fastboot to come up if I unplug the battery and plug it back in, but rebooting doesn't work, it never comes back and I have to unplug again. I got the factory image flash-all script to flash the bootloader, but then it rebooted to to the new bootloader and didn't come back. After a couple of battery unplugs I got it to flash cwm. I tried to boot to recovery, so I could at least see if it was 128GB in parted, but I never got it to. Occasionally when I plug it in it'll come up as the qualcomm 9008 etc, but most of the time it's an unrecognized device. When it does show up, the board diag tool gets part of the way through writing stuff, but then aborts.

Replacing the chip isn't exactly simple. I had zero experience with BGA soldering, but I had some with other SMT soldering so I thought it would be easier than it was. The software bit now seems like the easier part to me. I've now killed two boards, and probably two chips. My advice would be to not try this as your first BGA soldering experiment, there's a reason they use computers for putting the chips on in the first place. Any more money and I might as well have bought a used 5x.

The second time I did try one thing a bit different, I tried to flash misc and persist (backed up with dd from the old chip) using the board diag tool. I just put the files in the 16GB folder, and added them to the xml file and partitions.txt file. It flashed them, although it aborted after persist. I'm not sure if that was a screwup on my part with the how I added them to the files, or if it was just that the chip/motherboard is damaged. When I do get fastboot to come up, the bootloader is at least unlocked. I wasn't sure whether it would be locked or unlocked with misc empty, and bitdomo said you wouldn't be able to unlock or use LG Flash Tool without the misc partition.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
Did you use solder paste to try to reball the eMMC?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
Sorry to read that.

Did you try with jtag programming?

Also I found this post and continued post.

He explain, with a empty flash, the phone need to be loaded with an emergency loader. Also from this datasheet p23 (which is not the right one but the closer i found), i understand the emmc had a special boot partition. Can this be related?

When you plug your device is it recognized as a q9006 or a q9008?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] draykfyre:
It's random as best as I can tell, sometimes it's unrecognized sometimes it's q9008. At this point I'm not too worried about it, it was a fun little experiment that failed.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
Has anyone worked out anything on changing the Partition sizes? Emmc died, hoping to revive it by changing it for a 128gb emmc.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] draykfyre:
Without a backup of several partitions, including modemst1, modemst2, misc, persist, and possibly others that I haven't figured out yet, you won't be able to get it to boot, or any signal if you do get it to boot.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
I really think something like this may be the best way to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqyd6l3OTX0

Particularly excited about this, if it has the same functionality, or at least what we need (eMMC), since it's so much cheaper and smaller.

http://ufibox.com/ufi-dongle-released/

Only $7.5: http://galerio-flasher.com/detail/ufi-dongle-759.html

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available from any site that ships to the US. You could contact them at www.ufibox.com about whether there's any way to have it shipped to the US, maybe throw them a bit of extra cash, show them the site and article and why it could be popular (You could do this mod on more than just the Nexus 5).
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
How about through "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008"

Im wondering if it would be possible to install everything through the "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008", or do i really have to write it directly to the EMMC. Any help would be great, feel free to throw in your 10 cents.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
I've seen multiple suggestions that it may be able to do everything through USB after the new eMMC has been installed, but no one except Kapetz has done it yet and he won't reveal the process.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
Might as well try

I've pretty much got nothing to loose. Just saving up some cash, making an EFS backup. Already got all the hidden partitions backed up. Anyone who thinks they can help me with the partition part later on? As in making the grow/userdata partition take up the free space?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
Sorry for late,

I post a recovery-zip file earlier with gparted. It could help you if you succeed in the emmc replacement.

Also did you own a computer running linux?

To backup your partitions (my device had a external sd so it is easier) you can make something like this:

find /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/ ! -type d ! -iname "*data*" ! -iname "*system*" ! -iname "*cache*" -exec dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/$(basename {}) of=./$(basename {}) \;

(don't forget to test your command as dd means DataDestroyer!)

Good luck and post pictures of the mmc replacement please =)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
Currently on a Windows/Linux dual booting rig.Is there any way i can be sure that a 128gb emmc will work? As in does the Nexus 5 hardware support it? Wouldnt like to throw my money in the trash.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
How are you going to do the soldering part? Do you have access to a professional BGA station or are you going to use a heatgun?

My 16GB mainboard is now free for experiments as I finally put my 32GB mainboard into the red Nexus 5.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
A friend of mine has a BGA station, gonna ask him how much it would cost me. At the end of this month i should get my paycheck, hope its enough to cover the cost of everything. (Sad part time jobs... Happy that summer break is coming) Worst part for me will prob. be the emmc stuff... Hope Boarddiag will help here.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
If it will be cheaper if he solders two boards (in case he needs to make a stencil, for example) , I might consider sending mine over :)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Excudent:
Ill stop by his place today, ask him a few questions regarding the price and all. Just ordered the emmc, it should be here in about a week (I hope). Going to try and keep you up to date.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
Have you seen these videos detailing the process?

http://xdaforums.com/google-nexus-5/help/nexus-5-64gb-t3350533/post66517274#post66517274

It doesn't seem that complicated once you have the basic steps down, although practice would definitely be recommended if you have some dead motherboards lying around.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Thank you, looking forward to your update!

I watched them - however, as you say, practice will help a lot for sure. And with regards to my red Nexus 5 upgraded to 32GB and the OnePlus 3 being a pretty awesome phone, the Nexus 5 64GB mod is rather a fan thing to me than an absolute necessity - so I don't want to take the rather high risk of breaking at least the board if I try it myself using non-pro equipment ;)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Suici Doga:
Camera and RAM can be upgraded with a little bit of tweaking the AOSP code since they aren't core components.But it the CPU is a core component and I think that the new CPU probably won't fit since the phone is quite old (2013).Even laptops and desktops cannot be upgraded to different CPU sockets and if the CPU is not supported by the BIOS you will have to disassemble the BIOS.

For the Nexus 5 you will probably have to edit things like the kernel, U-BOOT , bootloader and first stage bootloader.Some of these are not flashable since they are protected areas and can brick the device which will require JTAG to repair.Also to change them you need JTAG
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] 薄井浩司:
Hi, I'm following the BGA replacement process as well. Please keep us up to date.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
Goddamn you, Kapetz, what was the point of posting this other than to stroke your ego and gain some fame/recognition (Which, albeit, you do deserve.) and then refusing to tell us how it's done I hunted you on every region of the internet I could hoping you let something slip. I sent you a PM arguing how the post I found on 4PDA where you said you don't want to because you don't to risk people bricking their phones isn't a sound argument.

What do you want? We can't solve it on our own without risking bricking our devices and wasting money to replace the eMMc cards if we destroy them or can't reball them (which would cost money as well), which not all of us can spare (Not everyone here is well off, you should see how ridiculously expensive San Francisco is and how some people live to be able to afford it,).

There are simple techniques to make the process much safer and easier. Do we not have a right to the risks we desire? I also mentioned how it could be made clear that this was not an easy process, completely unsuitable for beginners/those without experience, and requires the right equipment. 16GB storage is tiny nowadays and some of us would like to keep our N5s, along with the incredible 2x read/write benefit.

I swear, if I lived near you I would challenge you to unarmed combat (I am tiny, you would be absolute coward to fear fighting me.), if you lose, you reveal your secrets. Or whatever you desire. *grabs you by the shoulders and shakes furiously* What is it you want? What will make you reveal this information?

Unless you've just been really busy. In that case, could we have an estimate of when you may release it?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lehpaulmann:
I talked to him. Once he put on 4pda markup file to 64GB chip, and he wrote (I do not know who) were told to remove all, or else there will be problems. He removed and I am sure that he no longer share. Manufacturers of all forces will hinder the development of this theme, because if the process will be known and available, they will begin to lose money. Whether we know it before, what model would you choose? 16 or 32GB?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Alright, progress is going to be made :D I got in contact with somebody who will change the chip for me using a professional BGA reworking machine. And I just got myself a very cheap, beat-up N5 16GB - the display glass is shattered and even has a hole in it, but the LCD and touchscreen still work and most importantly, the board is fine. So I'm going to use it for the mod and get my eMMC put onto this board.

If it doesn't work, I only wasted little money and a phone that probably would never have been repaired anyway, and if it works, I transfer the board to my red N5. :)

So guys, I might come back to your offer of helping me through the partitioning process soon!

Only thing that worries me can be seen in post 12: http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=66237485&postcount=12

In this image, he has several wires attached to the board, going to some other PCB visible on the right. Does anybody have an idea what this could be? Probably a direct serial interface to the eMMC chip is needed?

Ah, another question: Is there anything I should backup from the 16GB board before I send it for eMMC replacement? The hidden partitions? And if so, how do I backup them?

Or are all necessary images available for download somewhere?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Alright, the N5 arrived. :D Must have been a pretty hard drop, it actually has a huge hole in the glass just under the display.

Last question before I send the mainboard and the chip for soldering: Am I right that it isn't important whether the bootloader is locked or unlocked, or which version of the bootloader or radio is flashed, because these are on the eMMC and are gone anyway after chip replacement? Or is there any software-side preparation I should do before I send the board away?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wangdaning:
That is correct, all of that would be on the old eMMC.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
in this thread there is some information about fuses on the board. It is xperia devices, so i don't know for n5 but i suppose you can also embed fuse on your board. I will just suggest: don't take risks, unlock the board and take a full emmc dump, I suppose it is not a big deal ;)

and good luck!

Edit:

At least you need to backup your EFS partition. I don't know if it is relevant but a quick search give me that link.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] NaxiB:
That sucks man... How is it even possible to have 16Gb instead of 32?? Like, i dont get how
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wangdaning:
I have the 16gb device and never had issues. I guess if you are using it as a media center, but then how is 32 or even 64 enough for that? I have a USB stick to store all of my important stuff (and of course back it up elsewhere) and can otg anything I need, but it is unlikely I need it on my phone.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Alright, thank you all! I unlocked the board, created a backup of my EFS partition and saved it to my PC. The board and chip are now on their way to the BGA soldering station. Keeping my fingers crossed that I get a working board back :)

Now: What do I do when I get the board back?

- Should I just reassemble the phone, plug it into my PC and see if it comes up in HS-USB loader (9008) mode?

- Can I then try applying the 32GB image in http://xdaforums.com/google-nexus-5/general/fix-unbrick-nexus-5-stucked-qualcomm-hs-t3043301, just to see if the chip itself works? I'm just wondering if that was what Kapetz did when he first showed his phone with only 32GB recognized. Or does one need to write something else to the eMMC first?

- Or do I even need to establish a direct connection to the eMMC and do something before I boot up the phone for the first time?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
Some time-killer readings: 1 2. Not for direct application on your device but the flashing process is really well explained.

Maybe the company that replace the chip will provide you the technical recipe (hope the translation is good :) ), you can quickly control it. Also if you own some electronic lab equipment, you can make some security tests, like lack of short-circuits on power rail, step-by-step diagnosis of the board, etc...

For flashing I guess the two approach are right: you can flash your new emmc with some jtag programmer, or use the unbrick guide you post. I guess KApetz use jtag programming to reflash is emmc.

P.S.: just to be safe, for the first usb plug of the phone, take a computer you don't care about ;)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Thank you very much for the links!

What do you mean by the technical recipe? The datasheet of the chip?

I do own the basic equipment to work on electronics, checking for shorts is no big deal.

Does one of the approaches have any advantage? For example, could it happen that I fry the board by turning it on with a completely empty eMMC?

If the worst thing that can happen is that I can't flash anything via the unbrick method, I would prefer to try this first before I order a JTAG programmer.

Alright, I guess one of my trusty ThinkPad T43's will take this job :)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] nailyk:
I mean that the enterprise who send the board, will return you the board accompanied by some technical documents, maybe xray pictures, or some photo of the bga balls.

No worries!

I don't know if there is particular requirement on n5. I'm following this thread because am really interested on it as i would apply the unbricking process on my device. From my reading, i guess, on n5, you could use both solution, but maybe you can check about fuses on your board. For ex maybe a fuse get blown if the board is started with a empty emmc, but i doubt. (Afaik, on xperia z1 there is 4 fuses but don't know why).

JTAG programming require soldering on the board and is slow. So i think the best way is the usb reflashing. btw isn't the qcom 9006 a sort of jtag over usb?

P.S.: jtag programmer can be diy ;)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Ah, okay ;) I'm going to ask him for that.

Ah, I get it. Does anybody know if there are such fuses on the Nexus 5?

Cool, thanks for the link! I'm going to make one - even if I don't use it this time, guess it can't be bad to have one :)
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Bad news: The board broke during the reflow process. On my board, the eMMC chip was underfilled with so much epoxy that some components around were destroyed while heating up the board to the extent necessary to be able to remove the old chip. I guess that this is the end of the project for me - it's tempting to get a 64GB Nexus 5, but as I now got a 32GB board in my red model, I'm fine with the phone so far, at least for the next time.

I'm still curious to see if anybody else accomplishes it. If anybody (inside the EU, otherwise shipping is likely to be too expensive) is interested in having a try - I'd sell my 64GB eMMC (the same chip as used by Kapetz).

Just an idea: Could it be that a 32GB eMMC has no epoxy underfill, considering there was no larger version of the Nexus 5? :D
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
Darn. Did you use a heat gun? A better option may have been a soldering iron with the right attachment, I have one that's blade like and would be perfect for this.

Also, has anyone delivered my message to kapetz?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
No, the guy who tried it for me used a professional BGA reworking station - normally, this is the best option you can get for BGA soldering. Only thing is that in this case, a soldering iron would maybe have been a better option as you can heat up the eMMC, maybe even frying it, to get the epoxy loose without affecting the rest of the board.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bukujutsu:
This is the kind of soldering iron tip I was thinking of: http://www.instructables.com/id/Uses-of-Different-Soldering-Iron-Tips/step6/K-series-tips/

It would have been perfect for the job. Or maybe something shaped more like the first two, if it really does transfer enough heat, and evenly: https://www.amazon.com/Weller-TB5TK-Replacement-Tip-TB100PK/dp/B001FOQH1G

It’s unfortunate, it sounds like it could have been prevented.

Also, from what I recall of the videos posted detailing the process, they don’t even use heat to remove the epoxy, or at least most of it, they take a while to scrape it it off with a sharp pointed instrument, repeatedly going around the sides.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] YassinTP:
Well, maybe I'll come across another board quite cheap and try to remove the chip myself - for putting the new one on, I'm sure he would give it another try and for this, the rework station with a camera supporting chip placement etc. is the best tool.

Going around the sides might work for a chip that is only "glued on" - but in the case of the Nexus 5 eMMC, it seems to be an epoxy underfill, meaning that you have to get it out from under the chip to be able to remove it.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] namerke:
I still hope for someone to manage to pull this off.

My Nexus 5 is still my daily driver, therefore i can't afford the luxury of experimenting with it, but if we would have a more detailed or a bit more fool-proof guide to follow up I would be definitely interested in modding my phone.

I know some guys in my region who are probably willing to change the emmc with their BGA workstation, but still, the QCOM Diag part and the ability to reflash the new emmc with all the necessary files ( +imei / mac / etc .. ) is still unclear.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] santi1993:
edited to maintain threado rder
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tr4nqui1i7y:
Anyone try this on a Nexus 6P yet? I am tempted too. I have a bricked device. Flashed the wrong file. Now my eMMC is corrupt.

I can't get to bootloader/recovery/splash.. or anything.
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] santi1993:
Hey i was thinking on this and maybe my questions helps to get some kind of info.

Can the partition information can be backed up from any way? i mean get all the partitions table information and thus his composition.

Can this write our eMMC's? http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Linux_Core_U-Boot_User's_Guide#Partitioning_eMMC_from_U-Boot, if yeas we can make a eMMC writer that dont need soldering, u only need to get ur emmc chip, but the bga on it with the bga layer and with any kind of little pressure a contact array can, being obviously, contact the bga pins of the emmc without soldering it, and with that we can make a emmc writer to put the emmc with the partition tables already in :P

I mean, the only different partition will be storage and the values instead of 28GB or 12GB will be 60GB :P
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] santi1993:
No one seems that viable?
[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] santi1993:
Ban me please