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…

A couple of months ago my Fonera 2200 gave up her job
It was an original Fonera in her v.0.7.2r3 firmware, no ssh enabled, nothing else added: just a Fontenna.
It all started with a loss of signal: the Fonera was active just for a couple of seconds a minute, like it was auto rebooting.
I tried a couple of reboot and I also tried to switch to the original little white antenna: nothing changed.
Then, after a lot of trying, i noticed this behaviour: the Fonera was working all right only without antenna! The signal strength was very low, but stable and working. So there must have been something in the amplifying signal circuit that short circuited the antenna. I can’t believe it’s something due to software.
Opening the Fonera case, the antenna cable and connector were perfectly fixed and soldered.
So i did the most obvious things:

• Wrote to the FON support, after checking the knowledge base
• Started searching around if someone noticed the same behaviour

After a couple of days i got no answer from FON (they claim to answer within 24hrs) and found noone with the same story, so I just gave up and selected my Fonera for my test expendable device

I documented a bit on the DD-WRT project, so to be prepared on what i could obtain, and I actually found the the Fonera has two antennas and they are operational!
One may just solder to a connector to the second antenna contact, like shown in the image.

Unfortunately the FON firmware can’t see that and will never use a second antenna, so the only choice is to install an alternative firmware: DD-WRT.

So i begun this Zonera Zombie project:

• I studied the second circuit and it seemed straightforward
• I desoldered the antenna from the ant2 contact
• Resoldered the antenna cable to the ant1 contact
• Hard reset the Fonera to the original firmware (v.0.7.1r1) pressing the reset button at the bottom of the case for 20 seconds (less tha 15 seconds and the reset wouldn’t stard and more than 25 seconds will just soft reset the fonera)
• Enabled SSH with the HTML injection trick
• Enabled redboot
• Installed DD-WRT v24SP1
• Enabled diversity, which lets you choose which antenna use for TX and which for RX, then selected the second antenna for both RX and TX

And that was it! When i connected the external antenna it started working like a charm!
You might want to install the thinclient software for letting FON see the fonera online and that’s it!

So why write now?!?
Well you know, I got another not-working fonera a couple of days ago and, guess what? It has the exact same behaviour.
Why the heck nobody ever tried to use the Fonera without the antenna and notice the behaviour?

I did the same Zombie revival and it worked!
“Ahahah, it lives, it lives!!!”

Hey, I know a lot of ppl with a not working Fonera and suggest you try that on yours!