MindSuburbia

Hey, it was back in 2006, when I first posted about my Samsung E700 poor man’s repairing.
Back then I was able to make the poor phone flex work for another couple of months.

Now here’s a new curious story: how I tried the flex switch.

When you need most your mobile phone

I was riding my bike back home with my good old Motorola C650 when I dropped it without knowing that.
It turned out it was smashed by some vehicle some time later and a man doing jogging found it.

Crazy enough he tried to use it, but nothing was showing up on the display.

Hey, what the hack is this story about? That’s insanely out of topic!!

Yes, I know, but if you want the real thing, you’ll have to read thru this…
So: finally the wise man put my SIM back in his phone and called the “home” contact.
Yep, I definitely answered. I wasn’t even aware I had lost the phone! Anyways to cut it out my phone came back into my hands! Thanx Marco!!!
I guess it wasn’t much of a gain, keeping a not working mobile!

I was really happy because I got back my 15EUR worth of calls on my SIM and the phone, though broken, seemed still usable.
After a cose look, it seemed the display was broken, so i thought: just try to place a call just to be sure a display switch will do the trick.
Nope, the phone does not place nor receive calls: I don’t think that a new display is a good idea!

But…. BUT! Hey, I got that nice E700 back in my closet, waiting for an extreme repair!!!

The real thing
I decided it was time to get my E700 back to work, so i ordered a new E700 flex (without displays) and I tried to unsolder the main display and to solder it back on the new flex.

Failure
Yep, I failed!

First of all the external display: it is just stitched on the board. I don’t know you, but i’ve seen tens of electronic caluclators and the always have this absurd way of stitching the display or the solar cells: that’s the same on the external display.
The bad thing is that you’ll never get your stitched contacts back! They just get disintegrated

No problem, the main thing is the internal display, or i’ll never be able to use my phone again.
Well the display has a nice soldered couple of contacts for power, so with wathever solder you have, you’ll be able to detach that.
The real problem is when you try to unsolder the data contacts: impossible, you risk to end up with a cut out piece of plastic.

Well I wanted to try anyways, so I started soldering everything and found a decent status to test: nothing. Pure black (except for the white backlight leds).

Conclusion
First: don’t even think of doing that if you don’t have the right tools

Second: even if you have the right tools be aware that anything could go wrong (expecially with the stitched external display). For the internal display here’s what may go wrong (in order of probability):
- wrong unsoldering: contacts broken
- wrong soldering: solder may damage your phone
- defective flex: you might to the thing perfect, but something’s not working

Third: you could just simply buy a complete display spare for less than 15EUR and just connect it (after having read my guide on dismounting the phone )

Happy bidding! Can’t wait to try my spare…

Last month I came across the crazy DreamHost API contest and decided to give a try with my Google Gadget for DH API.
Well, to be honest, at the moment of submitting (very close to the deadline), there were just a dozen API tools and a part from the buzzing iPhone & Co. apps, nothing really extraordinary (though very useful).

The day after the deadline, i was quite surprised to see a dozen more apps, with nice and rocking features, so I just stopped hoping of a reward for my gadget.

Now it turns out that the DH guys were so impressed with the efforts everybody put into this competition, that decided to give a $100 DreamHost credit to every participant!

Notice the Account Service Credits payment method, revealing the source of the $100

So, even if $100 credit is not a grand-prize, I have to admit I’m very impressed by this move: thank you to the DH guys!