Chosen Solution
I was recently being very lazy and was trying to trigger the home button with a pair of tweezers on the fpc, instead of install a temp home button real quick. The phone displayed the apple logo, powered off, and will not power back on. hard reset does nothing and I’ve tried a few different batteries. Its not a backlight circuit issue as I get no response from itunes or and vibrate. What could I have damaged to create such a dead short?
It’s hard to say. There are a few voltage rails (Mesa) on that connector as well as some communication bus lines. Your problem may vary depending on what pins you shorted together. Install a new battery and connect only the Lightning connector. Then connect it to iTunes to see if it is recognized. Then slowly add modules until the phone fails. It sounds like your Mesa IC could be blown though.
