the chinese repairer @master feng mobile repair has solved the problem of the iphone air's memory expansion chip not being recognized. he successfully upgraded a 256gb iphone air to a 512gb model. however, the difficulty of this task lay not in the technical details, but in the recognition of the nand chip. master feng initially replaced the memory chip according to standard procedures and completely erased the data of the original 256gb memory module. however, the replaced chip was not correctly recognized, and a 4014 error message appeared during the firmware flash process, indicating a failed flash.
based on his observations, master feng discovered that the serial number of the original 256gb memory module begins with 2nb. this is a prefix that was not found in other models. master feng speculated that apple's flash memory chips might not be made by sk hynix, samsung, or toshiba, but instead, apple might be using yangtze memory chips that it had stockpiled due to trade restrictions.
with the data of the original memory module erased and unrecoverable, and the new nand chip also being incompatible, the iphone air 256gb model was effectively unusable. however, a surprising development occurred when master feng discovered a compatible chip. he ultimately found a compatible high-speed hard drive and successfully expanded the storage of the iphone air to 512gb. according to master feng, compatible high-speed hard drives are currently unavailable due to a lack of supply. however, he added that if market demand persists, compatible high-speed hard drives are bound to appear in the future.
it's worth noting that after the memory chip replacement, the iphone air's benchmark scores significantly exceeded those of the original model, demonstrating that the expansion was achieved without modifying the logic board. therefore, it's certain that 1tb high-speed hard drives will appear in the future, and the storage expansion market is expected to become very active.
