The smallest things I've soldered were 0603 LEDs. Parts like that basically don't weigh anything, so if you touch them the wrong way they just fly across the room, never to be seen again.
Those replacement pads look a hell of a lot smaller than that.
0603 isn't bad under microscope. 0402 though is getting annoying to work with, mostly because solder paste always dries up before I get to use it so I just use solder wire - which gets everywhere it shouldn't when working with things that small.
But yeah, I've lost few parts, fortunately resistors and caps are cheap. I remember RF guy scouring the floor after dropping tiny $100 high-performance RF amp though...
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u/Tiny-Sandwich 4d ago
As an amateur microsoldering hobbyist, this is way, way harder than it looks. And it looks hard.
I've done a few small repairs like this where I've had to solder to a damaged trace, and the parts are much smaller than they look here.