Database Users

Help! My XDA went for a swim!

Gurus,
I am one of the unlucky ones who experienced the unforgiving flashflood courtesy of Typhoon Milenyo here in Los Banos, Laguna. In the haste and confusion while trying to save anything i can as the water was rising inside our house, i forgot all about my lovely xda. I found it submerged for about an hour under 3 ft of murky water. I left it to dry for 4 days. Only when the electricity was back was i able to open, thoroughly clean and dry the poor thing with my wife's hair dryer. Praying all along that the cleaning and drying would resurrect it back to life. I was hopeful that the motherboard would survive the beating but not the LCD. Usually it's the first thing that conks out when water is the culprit. The battery was also damaged - it bloated, so there was no way i can test if my phone was still functional.
I went to SM Megamall the other day in search for a battery that I can use to test the phone. There was a store that fortunately had a battery that wasn't sealed. And surprise! surprise! The phone sputtered to life! The LCD was working. I heard the beep sound that you hear when you hard reset the phone. So the speaker was working too! BUT, the thing stopped right after that message that says something like touch the screen to proceed with the setup. And it kept on restarting every 2 minutes - hangs, restarts, hangs, restarts. The water might have corrupted the ROM and the software wouldn't load. Or probably something else. I'm a bit hesistant in buying a new battery unless the phone would still work by flashing the memory and restoring the software. (If only i can borrow someone's spare battery to see if it is still possible to flash this before i buy a new battery). Hmmmm....
What do you think guys? You think the memory just needs flashing to get the xda running again?

qtek 2020 splashed
Hello from Italy, my qtek 2020 splashed (adverse effect of holiday) and then it had the same problem, when resuscited the "object" never charged radio rom but only the other parts of extended rom also after hard reset appair the script "no gsm" and the telephone don't play.
Than the object only play like a pocket PC without phone and other radio application (gprs, blu etc...). Sorry but i think is necessary to change the main board. Good holiday.

HELP- My Magician drinks water!!

Hi everybody,
Some waterdrops falled in my XDA Mini but it kept working OK. After I did a soft-reset I lost the Storage Folder. I performed a hard-reset, and upgraded a fresh ROM, but didn't work around it.
Could it be a permanent Damage? Nobody is able to repair my device near me.
Any Ideas to solve this problem?

if it really is waterdamage,theres not much they can do about it anyway. They usually replace the entire circuitboard. Waterdamage usually isnt covered under warranty, so unless you have some sort of insurance on the phone,expect a large bill.
Check your local phonestore tho, they usually take in phones and send them to a repairhouse.

TRY this
My Charmer was about 15 minutes in hot bath water so i think there is a chance
to rescue your phone.
Try the way described in my post to charmer forum: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=292188
You should have no problem with disassembling your mda - there is a detailed manual on this forum.
I think you should use a demineralised water only for a short time period (a few minutes) because the contact of your phone with water wasn't that massive.
You can try to skip putting the phone to water and start with putting it to the alcohol.
Remember do not put back your battery before the mda is completly dry - 24 hours or more.
I hope it will work.

Hermes totally dead.

Since I brought my jasjam it hasnt had a good life. It has been bashed around a bit too much and I only have myself to blame. This unfortunatly has cause the white screen of death getting worse and worse. Taking apart and reseating the ribbon cable to the board appeared to help but it would soon start getting worse again. The short term fix was a thump accros the palm of my hand. Unfortunatly today this back fired in me and now the phone is totally dead. I am fortunate enough to have another Jasjam that i was sorting out a few problems for a friend and this gave me the ability to swap out batteries chargers etc to try and get mine to fire up. No good.
I have taken it apart and checked all cables to no avail. pluggin in usb or charger have no affect. no lights no responce of anysort.
Any suggestions would be a great help
Thanks
Shane

shane11r said:
Since I brought my jasjam it hasnt had a good life. It has been bashed around a bit too much and I only have myself to blame. This unfortunatly has cause the white screen of death getting worse and worse. Taking apart and reseating the ribbon cable to the board appeared to help but it would soon start getting worse again. The short term fix was a thump accros the palm of my hand. Unfortunatly today this back fired in me and now the phone is totally dead. I am fortunate enough to have another Jasjam that i was sorting out a few problems for a friend and this gave me the ability to swap out batteries chargers etc to try and get mine to fire up. No good.
I have taken it apart and checked all cables to no avail. pluggin in usb or charger have no affect. no lights no responce of anysort.
Any suggestions would be a great help
Thanks
Shane
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's too much of a challenge to answer - could be any number of things. Without testing it with a multimeter I couldn't say.
What surprises me is that your friend lets you anywhere near his phone - and does he know you use his bits to test out your poor maltreated Hermes
I assume you have looked through the service manual to seek any clues?
Get it at the web link in my signature.
Mike

Thanks f0r you reply Mike
Im sure what he doesnt know wont hurt him anyway its only battery and charger.
Had a look thriough the service manual nothing jumps up and pokes me in the eye. I guess its fairly safe to say the main board has had it.
I cant seem to find anywhere to buy a replacment board and more importantly how much they are so i can see if its viable.
any suggestions
Thanks
Shane

shane11r said:
Thanks f0r you reply Mike
Im sure what he doesnt know wont hurt him anyway its only battery and charger.
Had a look thriough the service manual nothing jumps up and pokes me in the eye. I guess its fairly safe to say the main board has had it.
I cant seem to find anywhere to buy a replacment board and more importantly how much they are so i can see if its viable.
any suggestions
Thanks
Shane
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From my experience, you can only get motherboards from HTC or their repair outlets - this will cost lot$. Maybe if you're shelling out $$$ why not wait for the Kaiser?

please help my mate's dead Hermes
hi, this is to anyone who can help mainly prof and mikechannon. basically, i was trying to use my mates BRAND NEW hermes to repair my WLAN (Tmobile Hermes). it was working perfectly well until ran the RUU programme. i selected the 1.04SPL so that i could flash the hermes with the new NBH file i created. it flashed a 100% and it turned off and now its not coming back on. i plugged it into the charger, but no luck.i am afraid if i send it back to HTC, they might want to charge me for it. i love this phone badly, but sadly,i have given my mate mine. i dont mind sending this phone o anyone in the UK who can fix it. PLEASE HELP

shelay said:
hi, this is to anyone who can help mainly prof and mikechannon. basically, i was trying to use my mates BRAND NEW hermes to repair my WLAN (Tmobile Hermes). it was working perfectly well until ran the RUU programme. i selected the 1.04SPL so that i could flash the hermes with the new NBH file i created. it flashed a 100% and it turned off and now its not coming back on. i plugged it into the charger, but no luck.i am afraid if i send it back to HTC, they might want to charge me for it. i love this phone badly, but sadly,i have given my mate mine. i dont mind sending this phone o anyone in the UK who can fix it. PLEASE HELP
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not a flashing expert, so POF might be the first person to contact even if it's just to see if this is some recognised thing that can happen despite getting to 100%.
Can we assume the phone is completely dead? ie NO LEDs lit at all even when on charger?
Mike

reply for hermes (mikechannon)
yes it is totally dead. the LED only comes on RED when i take out the battery and stick in the charger.its not responding to anything. i have tried a HARD reset, no luck even a Soft reset too. i am now trying to use microsoft window CE 5 builder software, but i honestly dont think it will work. i really have to fix this phone. it a brand new phone.i tried ringing HTC europe but they are closed today. how can i check if its still under warranty. also, i bought it off some guy on ebay and just had it delivered this morning and now i have managed to brick it

shelay said:
yes it is totally dead. the LED only comes on RED when i take out the battery and stick in the charger.its not responding to anything. i have tried a HARD reset, no luck even a Soft reset too. i am now trying to use microsoft window CE 5 builder software, but i honestly dont think it will work. i really have to fix this phone. it a brand new phone.i tried ringing HTC europe but they are closed today. how can i check if its still under warranty. also, i bought it off some guy on ebay and just had it delivered this morning and now i have managed to brick it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I think you need to get a reply here or speak to one of the ROM gurus to see if this is a kniwn result of a faulty flash (seems odd to be but I'm no expert)
The phone is not completely dead if the RED led lights when the battey is out. It is meant to do this. Normally if the battey is faulty the LED will also go red when the battery is inserted.
Are you saying that when you put the battery in the Red LED goes out and no LEDs then show?
Mike

I had the same problem as well.
Red LED w/o battery, and NOTHING else.
Battery IN + charger : no LED
Anything else : no LED
Phone wouldnt boot
So I bought from eBay a broken 8525 that was reported to power up, but the screen was broken and some buttons were malfunctioning before the screen broke.
Swapped the motherboards and now I got a functional 8525.

dead hermes
yes, mikechannon, thats excatly what i am saying. when the battery is out and the charger is in, the RED LED comes on. but when the battery and the charger is in, nothing happens

shelay said:
yes, mikechannon, thats excatly what i am saying. when the battery is out and the charger is in, the RED LED comes on. but when the battery and the charger is in, nothing happens
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would have been tempted to say to check with another battery in case it was therefore a battery fault. BUT given what alkizmo says above it suggests the issue is as likely to be a blown component on the m/board. The Service Manual Hermes or Wizard ( I forget which) refers to a fuse. However nobody so far has identified a fuse as such. It may be another component (resistor perhaps) that is used to blow if current is exceeded. At present though we do not have sufficient info to either identify this component or bypass it.
Still think it's worth a casual inquiry to the ROM gurus to hear their view on whether this is hard or software related.
Mike

Hermes Dead Battery ??
The Red Light Will Not Work If The Charge Is More Than 50 Per Cent
So Try To Shutdown Your Hermes And Put The Usb Charger Then Reboot Your Hermes
May Be It Will Work

mikechannon said:
Still think it's worth a casual inquiry to the ROM gurus to hear their view on whether this is hard or software related.
Mike
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Having experienced blown motherboards on a laptop, a desktop and now a cellphone, I can attest to this : If NOTHING powers on at ALL, it is a hardware fault. Before you speak out for laptop/deskop, don't forget about the BIOS, if the BIOS is fried, the motherboard will still power up (fans spinning, lights turning on).
However, maybe that something in the software CAUSED the hardware issue. However, once the damage is done, no changes to the software (even if you could change the software without turning on the phone) would make a difference.
SETOUF said:
The Red Light Will Not Work If The Charge Is More Than 50 Per Cent
So Try To Shutdown Your Hermes And Put The Usb Charger Then Reboot Your Hermes
May Be It Will Work
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The red light shows when there is no battery as well and the charger is plugged, if there is no battery and the red light doesnt show, you got a problem.
And, shutting down/rebooting is not an option here. The guy's phone won't even light up. It's fried.
Last suggestion of hope : remove the battery and leave the phone unplugged for a whole day. Then put back the battery and do a hard reset attempt.
If this doesnt work, then I got nothing else, as I said, I resulted in replacing the motherboard.

if you cant get it working i will buy the back speaker off you

ok, i am an optimistic person so i will surely try your approach. one question though, as the phone is brand new, do you reckon if i send it back to HTC europe, can they fix it as it is still under warranty?

thanks a lot for your reply. i am an Optimist so i will surely give your method a try. one question though: do you reckon if i send it back to HTC europe, will they fix it as the phone is brand new and still under warranty.although, i bought the phone on ebay brand new from a seller for my mate.its a vodafone branded HTC. cheers

Authorized Dealer?
shelay said:
thanks a lot for your reply. i am an Optimist so i will surely give your method a try. one question though: do you reckon if i send it back to HTC europe, will they fix it as the phone is brand new and still under warranty.although, i bought the phone on ebay brand new from a seller for my mate.its a vodafone branded HTC. cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Usually, most companies only warranty items from authorized dealers. If the seller was an authorized dealer you are ok. If not, they "might" fix it. Call to make sure before sending it in.

Dead Hermes
My VPA Compact III v1605 seems to have the same type of problem - it only shows red lite when it is plugged in and battery is off, but... but I can also (hardly) recognise 4-colour bootloader-type screen, which blinks once and reappears every time I reset the device.
It doesn't communicate with computer, MTTY says "USB port can not open"...
The difference between usual bootloader screen and this one is that I can't recognise any characters (like IPL/SPL), or maybe because it's hardly seen, I can not see characters?..
Is there any chance to have this device repaired?

Ok, not sure I can help here, but first can we clarify something -
You say the red LED shows with the batter "off". Do you mean with the battery out of the phone?
Mike

Some suggestions...
Hi there,
i messed around a lot with the hermes hardware the last few weeks.
There's a lot of stuff in those mobile that could go wrong
@shane11r
I have taken it apart and checked all cables to no avail. pluggin in usb or charger have no affect. no lights no responce of anysort.
Any suggestions would be a great help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like there's some part messed up in hardware.
If you dropped it some times, maybe some component got damaged.
Please check the voltages on board firmly after pressing the power on button with battery inserted. Just like mikeshannon suggested
There have to 3.15V, 1.8v, and ~1.2V around the board.
I will take a picture from the mainboard with testpoints if you like.
Anyway you need some electric skills
Otherwise give to a service center or buy a new mainboard.
@shelay
hi, this is to anyone who can help mainly prof and mikechannon. basically, i was trying to use my mates BRAND NEW hermes to repair my WLAN (Tmobile Hermes). it was working perfectly well until ran the RUU programme. i selected the 1.04SPL so that i could flash the hermes with the new NBH file i created. it flashed a 100% and it turned off and now its not coming back on. i plugged it into the charger, but no luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is very similar to what happened to my device. After downgrading from olipro's hard-spl something went wrong. After flashing succeeded with 100% the device got restarted and there it was... nothing!!
What i found out in the meantime is that the IPL was not flashed correctly.
While trying to reflash the device with JTAG debugger, i examined that the NAND write protect signal sticks to GND right after reset.
Maybe this also a hardware issue. I'll find out soon
The bricked IPL-bootloader could also be the cause.
At least if the red light turns on, the DC-DC converter on the hermes is doing well. This means the unit is partially working but not booting.
....nearly forgot to say, that there is also a fuse on the hermes mainboard.
should do some pix
Cheers,
scholbert

Pleae help, Ive broken my hermes!!!

I was removing the back cover, as I had to remove a broken stylus from its clot.. I successfully removed the 3 screws, and was able to prize open the case, and push the stylus out...
However, I put it all back together and now it doesnt work!! I get the red light on to charge when I insert power, but I cant turn it on...
I did notice that somehow, the contacts for the battery seem lose, and I dont know how to fix them...
How do you remove the whole of the back??
Anyone help, or suggest what I may have done??
Thanks

I think it is truly dead.. the plastic thing with battery contacts has come off completely... now how the hell do I fix that!!!!

Think I may be able to fix it, as if i hold it in place over the contacts on the board, i managed to get it to boot... so i just need to find away to fix it to the board....
Fingers crossed

DocSoton said:
Think I may be able to fix it, as if i hold it in place over the contacts on the board, i managed to get it to boot... so i just need to find away to fix it to the board....
Fingers crossed
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Better news than I expected to hear. Are the contacts broken above board level? If so a fix may well be possible by re-soldering the contacts. This could be tricky in as much as it may be difficult to prevent heat transfer down the wire into the board. I had assumed they had been wrenched out below the board surface. If you just glue the connector housing withe contacts in place you might be lucky and find it reliable. However I would worry that with every knock or jolt you.ll find the pone will turn of and you'll have to keep re-starting it.
Mike

See attached, not great quality, but you can see the contacts...
What on earth do I use to stick it back on???

DocSoton said:
See attached, not great quality, but you can see the contacts...
What on earth do I use to stick it back on???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From that it appears to have snapped through the soldered joints without any real damage. If that's the case then it is fixable. The last example we saw of this on the forum the contacts broken inside the board, but it looks like you are lucky.
Mike

From your comments, it sounds like you don't have any experience with soldering. I would look for an electronics repair shop, or find a friend that has experience soldering.
If you can't find that you may only have the option of selling it somewhat cheap. I do my own soldering, so I don't know what direction to try to point you for that. Hopefully this will help you getting your hermes back up and running.

Thanks for all your help.. lukily the old man is a sparky.. so Im sending it up to him to have a go, if not him, then his mates and electronics whiz.. so hopefully I should get it back all sorted.
Cheers

Its been a while since I started this post... just not got around to getting it sorted until recently...
Now, does anyone know what the different contacts do?? We have partial success with resoldering the contacts, the device now turns on, when on power, but it is not charging the battery.. I can only assume the contact(s) responsible for charging the battery may have a poor solder...
The battery says 100%, but when I remove power, it turns off after a very short while...
Can anyone help..?? Its come along way since I originally broke the device, and I wasnt sure if it would ever work again.. but I seem to be so close to breathing life back into the phone, and am sure we only need to resolder a couple of the contacts.... Would be handy to find out what all the contacts actually do...

The battery may have gone bung, especially as its 6 months later that this problems started. If it started right away I'd say it could be the contacts but if it has only just reared its head I'd say that the battery needs replacing. If you can get your hands on a spare, they are fairly cheap through ebay (less than $10), then you can check if it is the battery.
Cheers...

I already had a spare battery.. I get the same on both...
After powering on, the light goes amber for a couple of mins, suggesting it is charging, then goes green.. show 100% charged.. but dies after a few mins...
If the power is not connected, phone wont even turn on... I can only assume neither of the batteries is being charged...
I did read somewhere, although cant remember, that one of the contacts is responsible for charging.. would be good to know what the contacts do...
Thanks

Best idea would be to go to Mike Channons site. He is the guru of all things HTC. At the very least you could pm him but I haven't really seen him hanging around the Hermes site for a while. The link to his site is in his sig.
Cheers...

Help Please Hermes won't turn on.

ok so what happened was is that i dropped my phone although when i looked at it it seemed fine, not even a scratch, calling worked...but a couple of hours later i got no signal in this place although my dad had signal and we're on the same network and we have the same phone too. I received signal as soon as I left the place.
And here is where my problem comes, everything was working fine and i had my phone in my pocket for the whole day cause i was at school and after school i decided to take a look at the time, but my phone was off and wouldn't turn on, but i expected that it ran out of battery.
I got home and tried charging it, but nothing happened, so i decided to use my dad's battery (fully charged) it still wouldn't turn on, i've tried soft/hard resets still nothing.
can it be the hardware? what is broken? it won't turn on/won't charge/no led lights/no red led when charging without battery/ nothing so what is wrong please help.

Probably battery contacts... If you can see a crack, you might be able to resolder them and fix however the Hermes uses a multi layered board and if the break is there then you need a new mainboard, in a few words, your Hermes is toast....

is there any possible fix? if the board is broken, where can i get a replacement and instruction on how to fix? thanks :]

Find an old Hermes on ebay. If the screen doesn't work or something, DON'T get one with "No GSM", then you should be able to replace the Mainboard.
Find the HTC Service Manual here - http://michael-channon.spaces.live.com/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c02_owner=1
You need a size 6 torque key and a small flatbladed screwdriver to get the Mainboard. Pretty easy, I've taken my Hermes apart more times than I can count.
Cheers...

thanks for the help so far :]
but is there a site that just sells the part? cause i really don't want to end up buying a mainboard on ebay that ends up not working too.