Database Users

Is my MDA done for??? Can it be saved?

HEy I have an MDA but about a month ago my usb port broke and is loose inside the phone.
I want to know if this phone can be saved in any way
I have a LOT of contacts and other important info left on the phone and I need them badly.
the battery is dead and I need to know if to call it quits on this phone or not
maybe I could charge the battery through another MDA but i still need all those contacts to be transfered and its way too much to individually get.
please shed some light on what I should do

Maybe get a new battery and connect through bluetooth?

Repairing a HTC Wizard USB Connector
HEy I have an MDA but about a month ago my usb port broke and is loose inside the phone.
I want to know if this phone can be saved in any way
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it can be saved!
The same thing happened to me and I fixed it. What you need to do is get
a soldering iron
some extremely thin silver solder (I used .015 dia. Radioshack 64-035e)
some desoldering braid (Radioshack 64-2090)
a continuity tester (the more needle-like the probes, the better!)
a tiny flat head screwdriver (1mm I think).
All this is available at RadioShack or can be found for less online.
Take the phone apart. This is tricky. Read the HTC repair guides available off of this site.
ftp://xda:[email protected]/Wizard/Docs_Tutorials/Wizard_Service_Manual.pdf
I can do it with a tiny flathead screwdriver instead of the torx that is recommended.
At this point, go on youtube.com and watch some videos on how to do surface mount soldering at home with a normal soldering iron. I found this to be helpful and confidence inspiring.
One thing I did was use the file on my Leatherman tool to sharpen the soldering iron tip to a sharp point. This helped get to the tiny nook that you will be soldering.
Find the loose usb connector in the phone. Its probably in fine condition. The reason why it broke is that HTC did not use enough solder to hold it to the board. Its not likely your fault. In the old days we called this a 'design flaw' and an organization called the 'BBB' would instigate what is called a 'product recall' for what we casually referred to as a 'lemon'.
Now, solder the four corners of the USB connector to the board. It probably won't be hard to put it in its original place. Don't leave a cold solder joint... make sure the dolops of solder are nice and shiny.
Then carefully proceed to solder the pinouts on the connector to the traces on the board. This is easier than it looks because the thin solder will flow right onto the traces under the connector.
If you accidently short two traces with solder, then use the desoldering braid to suck it up. Be extremely careful not to lift hard on the braid and pull up the traces. This did not happen to me, but I was careful.
The thing to know is that the USB connector has 5 pinouts but the USB standard only uses 4 of them. Google Mini USB connector pinouts and study which pins go to which wires: http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml
When you think you have succeeded at soldering, use the continuity tester on your multimeter to check your work.
Check for short circuits between the traces.
Plug a mini-usb cable into the phone and carefully check continuity from the far end of the USB cable, to the trace on the motherboard of the phone. All four wires on the USB cable should match to the corresponding traces on the board. This is pretty logical when you are actually staring at it. But just in case, what I am saying here is, take one conductor of the continuity tester and place it on one pinout of the usb connector on the phone. Take the other conductor of the continuity tester and put it on the corresponding wire insider your 4 pin USB-A cable connector. If you hear the multimeter beep, you succeeded.
These diagrams show which pinout goes to which wire: http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml
If everything checks out. Reassemble the phone, and see if it charges with the wall charger. If it does, then see if you can get it to sync with ActiveSync. If the phone doesn't show up in the device registry (or the MacOS X System Profiler), you definitely have not soldered it properly. Be sure the phone is on of course.
PS. Finally, was it all worth it? Well, it was great to get my data back, now its time to go get an iPhone! I mean really, all of this hacking is not worth your time. The iPhone is a far superior cell phone in every aspect. Who wants to screw around with installing half-baked ROM files and buggy M$ platforms? I digress.
PPS. I was able to do all this with MacOS X running VMWare Fusion, Win XP SP2 running Active Sync. So you don't even need a PC!

you tell us to make sure the phone is off way at the end i found this, but is this considered service mont? http://youtube.com/watch?v=KdWCffSdpuE

There 2 things I could add to the instructions above,
1 when I solder surface mount or tight connections I use lots of solder resin (like a acidic primer that cleans the surface as heat is applied, can be cleaned with isopropylene[alcohol]). This really makes the solder flow good to the contacts then use solder wick to suck up any extra solder that may present a problem.
2 You can sign up for mail2web.com and sync your pda with there exchange server, works wonders, I can flash my phones and all of them always have the same full contact list with all the emails, calender etc......
hope this helps

resin and alchohol do the same thing?

Loose Connector on Phone - Need help

Hi,
The connector on my touch (mini usb port) has somehow gotten loose or something. Everytime I connect the phone to charge or sync......the slightest touch/movement throws it off. I know there may not be much I can do right now except maybe replace the motherboard or something. Just needed some info if tht is indeed the way to go....or is there some other solution or a fix that any of the geniuses here can help me out with
Thanks in advance

Hi... apparently this does happen quite often with this connectors but it doesn't necessarely mean that that connector is overall loose.
Try to check if this might be your case.... On some devices I've noticed that the metal strips within the connector (in the phone, top part of the connector usually) looses away from its original position, if its not broken you may be able to unbend it and restore it to the original position with a thin pin or something of that sort. This will make things work again.
To prevent this from keep happening just be carefull when you plug/unplug your cables into it. Be gentle when inserting the cable and make sure to put the pressure to insert it only when its in the exact position.
hope this helps... good luck

[email protected] said:
...The connector on my touch (mini usb port) has somehow gotten loose or something. ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought I had this problem, but it turned out to be a faulty USB cable - I think the wires were loose where they joined the connector. Since changing the cable I've had no problems.

HTC Hero USB / EXT port wear

Hi Folks...
I've been using a Hero full time for just over a year, and lately have had problems charging it. Seems like the USB / EXT port has weared down to the point where the cable doesn't contact as well as it should.
Anyone else had a similar problem? Wonder if this is fixable, or time for a new phone?

If you're talking about the cable just fitting loosely, you can always put a little bit of pressure inside edge the metal end on the cable to slightly bend it outward and it will help it fit a bit more snug.
If you're talking about it actually making contact loosely on the inside, you can always get a small piece of scotch tape and put it on the outside of the large side of the metal that fits into the phone, it will help push the contacts closer to the inside of the hero's usb.

Thanks for the suggestion, ill give that a go....

fosco_boffin said:
Hi Folks...
I've been using a Hero full time for just over a year, and lately have had problems charging it. Seems like the USB / EXT port has weared down to the point where the cable doesn't contact as well as it should.
Anyone else had a similar problem? Wonder if this is fixable, or time for a new phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same issue here, will be trying suggested solutions.
But I see no answer to your first question: Anyone else had a similar problem?
Grtz Henro

henro said:
Same issue here, will be trying suggested solutions.
But I see no answer to your first question: Anyone else had a similar problem?
Grtz Henro
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this issue with 3 of my usb cables that have pulled out while using the phone in disk mode and in the car charging. I used the method to slightly bend the connector outward on the cable itself and worked fine for me. One cable is a 12" that I use on my netbook, the other 2 are 3' -- one of which I use in my wife's car for charging and the other I use on my home desktop PC.
But there are other cables that I have not had issue with --the OEM cable I use in my car and I use a different cable at work. That said, in my case, it seems the issue is more with the cables then the actual port on the phone. Either way, by using one of techniques I suggested previously and what I've mentioned above, I have no issues now. I hope that clarifies the answer.

U seem to be right..... Different cables, diffferent results.....
Bought new ones and they work beautifully

I find this incredible, my hero's usb port is still really tight after over a year of use--to the point of being hard to plug in--especially the wall charger cable (uses the full ExtUSB?) which I use every single day. What do you guys do to the poor things?
My 3.5mm port has gotten a little loose though (shear force on the connector no doubt) but bending back the copper "spring" a little has fixed that for now.

Loose USB port fix

So my EVO has slowly developed a loose USB port over time. It got to the point I could only charge and not use USB mass storage.
So I fixed it. It turns out that pocket lint slowly got compacted over time from being in my pocket and pushing the USB jack into the port. I got in there with a pick (from my lock pick set, another hobby) and a razor blade (To get on the other side of the port) and sure enough, the USB port is now working just like it used to.
So, there wasn't a hardware failure of any kind.... just pocket lint.

Hey, I'm having the same exact problem with the usb port, you wouldn't happen to have taken pictures of the process would you? I'm pretty bad with fixing things myself. Do you think you could explain this to me with a little more detail?? Thanks
Sent from my dope fly fresh EVO

I can try to explain it, but I don't have any pictures of the process.
There wasn't anything wrong with the connectors on the phone, it was just that so much crude got compacted in the backside of the port that the jack couldn't be pushed in all the way to make a connection.
I got a small piece of metal (a lock pick) that is maybe 1/8" or 1/16" of an inch thick and started to dig at the backside of the port. This is the side closest to the battery. I grabbed the pieces I could with the pick, and used a pair of needle nose pliers to grab the more stubborn pieces after I loosened them with the pick.
The other side (the side not housing the connections and closest to the screen) is very tight to the USB housing. I slipped a razor in that space and managed to get out the remaining crude, which was very little compared to the opposite side.
Took maybe 5 minutes of poking around, and went from the jack falling out if I even slightly moved the phone to getting a nice click when I insert the jack.
I don't know how prone to damage those connectors on the phone are, but I wasn't exactly gentle at one point with the razor and it survived. I was going to get the phone replaced anyways so it was a low risk venture for me.

[Q] Not charging unless I put upward pressure on USB cable

Hello everyone,
Since a few days my phone doesn't charge unless I hold the cable up and in the left or right corner of the port.
If I just stick it in, it doesn't connect/charge at all. And sometimes it says it's charging, but it isn't at all (or it's losing more power than it's receiving because it doesn't have good contact with the port).
Is there any fix to this or does anyone else have this problem?
It is NOT a problem with my micro-USB cable, I tried many, they all act the same.

Bad news
You have to replace your USB port, there's no doubt about, unfortunately!:crying:
Edit: there's a little chance to solve this by cleaning up your USB port...

i had this and it turned out to be dirt ground into the bottom of the USB port. A thin piece of wire from a tie wrap sorted it.
(of course, usually it IS a faulty USB port)

samsamuel said:
i had this and it turned out to be dirt ground into the bottom of the USB port. A thin piece of wire from a tie wrap sorted it.
(of course, usually it IS a faulty USB port)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suppose this is a stand for what I said:highfive:?!

hehe,. yea, , only to begin with i was countering your 'theres no doubt' remark, , but then realised i hadn't read your whole post.

Well guys, I tried cleaning. A layer of dust came of so I got excited, but it didn't work.
There also is way too much play with the cable when it's in, so yeah.
How much is that port change going to cost me?

from what I've read its not so much the price as the difficulty, , there are loads of stories of repair shops screwing it up. If you're a dab hand with a soldering iron, give it a go, or if you go to a repair shop, get down in writing what they are gonna do if they screw it up.

Yet again a good advice!
I wouldn't suggest to do it your self unless you're a soldering master: as samuel suggested there are (so called) profesionals failing to do this, just because it's tricky enough to get the job done the right way.:fingers-crossed:

Sometimes it is possible to resolve by tightening up the connector in a fashion that promotes the contact of the female to male contacts.
Done one dismantled once as easy to work on connector, basically I pushed the shorter edge in just slightly & with CARE on the female socket in the area over the contact plate thus forcing the male plug to push tighter against the contacts, also tweaked the to plug retention lugs so plug clips tightly.
Worth trying as if lucky can be a cheap easy solution & has worked fine on one I did but as only done the 1 I have no idea if it going to work for majority of worn plugs :-S
Replacing board socket is tricky & not that cheap normally as a good tech knows it a not liked or easy repair ... good luck

Thanks for the great advice everyone, I really appreciate it.
Mister B said:
Sometimes it is possible to resolve by tightening up the connector in a fashion that promotes the contact of the female to male contacts.
Done one dismantled once as easy to work on connector, basically I pushed the shorter edge in just slightly & with CARE on the female socket in the area over the contact plate thus forcing the male plug to push tighter against the contacts, also tweaked the to plug retention lugs so plug clips tightly.
Worth trying as if lucky can be a cheap easy solution & has worked fine on one I did but as only done the 1 I have no idea if it going to work for majority of worn plugs :-S
Replacing board socket is tricky & not that cheap normally as a good tech knows it a not liked or easy repair ... good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to try this first, if it doesn't work, I'll follow samsamuel's advice.
I love this community!

Unscrewed said:
Thanks for the great advice everyone, I really appreciate it.
I'm going to try this first, if it doesn't work, I'll follow samsamuel's advice.
I love this community!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May take couple of adjustment to get it good & best do a little at a time.
Will only work if is contact issue between plugs, if issue is broken contact leg or poor connector leg solder joint to mainboard then no benefit.
Post back if get it working ...

Mister B said:
May take couple of adjustment to get it good & best do a little at a time.
Will only work if is contact issue between plugs, if issue is broken contact leg or poor connector leg solder joint to mainboard then no benefit.
Post back if get it working ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure thing! I have one question, though. How do I correctly open up the device without damaging it (too much)?

Torx screwdriver and a thin credit card, there break down videos on youtube.

As above really, do your homework on stripdown & take a lot of care, back cover is easy if done right, plectrum is useful plastic tool for prying things apart or get hold of decent plastic opening tools, credit card can be used but too thick really.