Did I kill my wifi antenna?

[kq702]

Hi I was replacing the digitizer in an ipad and I accidentally ripped the wifi cable a bit. You can see the areas holding it with a screw got ripped off. Since it doesnt appear any wire connections got ripped, I was wondering if it would this still work ok? Looks like its only used for grounding.

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[Salvatore il Migliore]

Hi KQ702,
I also combined the same thing,
but tell me, how it ended, it still works on WiFi and 3G?

[Haribo91]

I have done the same thing, it appears that my wi-fi is still functioning but the problem is the signal appears to be very weak and I cannot get a signal upstairs anymore.

I seen there was also a rubber stick pad covering the connection which I believed should be rooted to the frame of the digitizer. I took this pad off and it increased the signal but only slightly, I opened it up again and taped a speaker cable and routed the cable to stick out the side just and no more.

Looking into the workings of a wi-fi I antenna designs on other products such as laptops the cable antenna cable is routed all the ways around the LCD inside the frame.

There was a small shiny bit on the inside of the digitizer with a plastic peel off cover on it but it does not align with the connector part on the top of the antenna. I don't know if this was just a manufacturing defect.

My next thing to try is run a very thin speak cable consisting of 2/3 strands to run all the way round the case and connect as one big loop.
Also just to drop a bit sold on the damaged grounding pads.

Most of the above is just based on theory. I work as an engineer for a repair centre of mobile devices and am faced with issues like this quite a lot.

[Samana]

You probably did kill it. Ai yi yi…

-Samana

[PeterJMelb]

Google how to repair iPad digitizer or aerial, there are many hits.

[AQ_OC]

If any metal bits got ripped, you could have done damage.