Yea its very doable if you have a microscope, i really like the small repair stuff but i would not be shure if your local phone repair guy is able to fix this. If i were in canada i would take a look at it. Even if it is a 128gb drive i would at least try, either get experience or a working drive nothing to lose.
What did you use for pad replacement in your pictures? I have always used enamel copper wire but i also have seen people use premade pads to gluee on.
Yea i would guess the pads are ripped i have never seen the solder breaking instead of the pads ripping. If that happend to someone near me i would try to fix it since it isnt imposssible if you have some experience and a microscope but not sure if your average repairshop can do that.
Nah the solder is propably not the thing that broke. From experience i would guess the copper pads are ripped off wich can be repaired but is not easy.
Archwiki? Linux administrators handbook? Countless other books and forums?
Yocto and compile it all yourself. Arch people might think they are cool because they have to use a console to install their de but creating the devicetree for your board and then only get a console over a serial connection or ssh is the true linux experience.
Man pages are also something underrated and tldr is great if you need a quick look at a few basic parameters of a program.