Database Users

Possible new cause for white screen and d-pad failures

Hello
I have managed to come to the conclusion that the original cause for the d-pad failures is NOT the loose connector as described before. this connector is in fact surprisingly sturdy.
the problem lies with the little black IC on the keypad membrane.
i am taking my hermes tomorrow to my friends' phone repair shop and he is going to heat the IC up for me and allow it to reseat.
i shall report back tomorrow.
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just in case your wondering, i came to this conclusion by purposefully 'un seating' that IC and lo and behold, intermittent white screen and d-pad failures. however if i applied pressure to the IC it allowed it to make contact and it worked again, let go and white again.
many thanks

It will be interesting to hear the results on this BUT -
I'm not certain I agree with your methodology here though. I am not surprised that deliberately un-seating the IC causes a white screen! In all probability removal of any number of components will cause a white screen! AND of course heat gunning it again to re-establish it's connections will make it work again!
Unfortunately this does not prove to me at least that the IC is the problem for most people. If I remove a capacitor from my TV and the picture goes, I cannot conclude that everyones picture problems are related to that capacitor. The D'pad connection though it may appear sturdy has a set of very fine connections and it only takes one to be fractionally bent or oxidised for you to get the whitescreen or indeed a poor connection of any component or connection.
However the IC was reported on in the loooong white screen thread where some folk found that placing padding on the IC surface or squeezing it would correct the white screen and thereby concluded that it was an IC connection fault.
Of course the problem is IMHO that there are several possible causes and any individual person can have one or a combination of things causing the white screen. So far we have as possible causes:
D/Pad connector (must be seated firmly and FLAT but neither over tightened nor too loose. The pins may also get slighly bent or oxidised so cleaning them or fractionaly bending them may work
The D/Pad IC may have poor contacts.
The LCD Flex cable may have cracks (but less likely in my view)
Some have reported capacitor faults (possibly poor connections or degradation with heating or current draw) on both D/Pad and M/board. These faults may be related to the whitescreen only appearing after 10 or so minutes of use and recovery after switching off for a while.
Heating up - in some cases the whitescreen only appears when the phone is warm/hot. This may be caused by expansion of the multi-layered board causing poor contacts / or possibly components not performing correctly due to heat or current draw.
Often some of these whitescreens can be made to disappear by putting pressure on certain components / connections or even in some cases by squeezing the phone casing near the D'pad area. So all in all it is likely to be poor contact somewhere, it's just that it can be in several possible locations - including but not exclusively the D-Pad IC.
Mike

first of all, can i just say what an honour it is to have you comment on one of my threads!
second of all, i am only trying this as a last resort to revive my hermes before i jump ship to the raphael/diamond. or unless i decided to buy a new keypad PCB for it in the hope it will fix it!
i shall report back as soon as ive been down to the shop
many thanks

hi there
i had the white screen initially and although intermittent was useable, then, progressively got worse. countless reseats of the cable, time and time again, including put 'foam' in the places indicated then i did indeed notice in that post about the ic
so, i decided to experiment with the IC. first two layers of paper on top, made some difference in that i had to apply less pressure to get it to work, and then i though, id heat it up slightly using a hairdryer (only thing i had to hand!) and a nozzle made out of a drinks can and just pry it up gently. and indeed the white screen was permanent although the phone otherwise was functioning.
so, i'm taking it down to my mates tomorrow or as soon as i get a chance and he's gna have a go at reseating it using his fancy hot air gun rework thingumajig
i would definetly go for the raphael! for the sole reason that it has a VGA screen! (im an ebook nut!) and it looks beautiful!lol
will keep this post updated

i have to agree with mike on this ,there are many problems that can cause the white screen problem. But i am betting that heat is the major culprit,wether it is the IC you mention ,is another discussion, unless of course your friends attempt at reseating the IC cures the problem ,once and for all. Good luck anyway. I am keen to find out if it was successful or not

Hi there
well, he had a look at it under some fancy microscope and confirmed the IC was not sitting 'true' meaning not 100% level, he also used some little jig he had which he sat the board in and it confirmed it wasnt level
so, he heated it, and allowed it to reseat and we tried it again and it appears that did not solve it. we used another flex cable from his own spv and it still didnt work, my cable ran beautifully in his spv too though.
so, im going to find a replacement keypad pcb now and go ahead and buy it and see if i can get it to work

Hi
ive been hunting for the last hour and i cant seem to locate a d-pad anywhere
if i was to use a cingular 8525 d-pad in my vario II it would still work, just button orientation would be different wouldnt it?
do you know of anywhere where i could get one?

I'm having whit screen prob on my wizard and a complet housing case change. I didn't know a keyboard can cause white screen. I was looking to buy a new flex cable. what's the ic and who do I heat?

CORRECT Hardware GPS Fix

First off, I want to say that Plato56 was the first person to try this, and I want to give all credit where credit is due. Several others have applied this method, including myself, with great results. I apologize for not knowing everyone and I apologize if any of this is not clear. Please let me know and I will clarify the best I can and update this original post.
Ok, the other thread found here is close but the wrong contacts are circled. I've uploaded several pics to reference as you read through this post. The first pic has the correct contacts circled. The contacts circled in the other thread are for the cellular radio.
So What's The Deal With The GPS on my SGS!?
Essentially, the problem is two fold.
Problem #1: Samsung has no clue how to put out decent firmware.
Problem #2: The copper contact that Samsung chose to connect the GPS Receiver to the GPS Antenna is about the crappiest selection they could have possibly made.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS THREAD IS TO ADDRESS PROBLEM #2. If we address and solve one then we can (hopefully) tackle the other effectively one day. Here is a technical, but relatively easy to understand explanation of why Firmware alone can't fix the GPS problems that plague ALL SGS phones (even if your GPS is "fine" it still has weak SNR Numbers)
Explanation (Courtesy of T313C0mun1s7):
Q) Is it hardware?
A) It's complicated. We are talking about very high frequency RF here, you gotta understand how electricity acts when you reach these frequencies to fully get this, but I will summarize. At zero hertz or DC current electricity flows through the body or center of the conductor. As long as you have enough conductor to carry the required current you are good. So the type of spring contact they used is fine for DC, in fact I went looking for replacement contacts and the only thing I can find are designed for either battery tabs or for grounding contacts. As you go higher in frequency the AC current of electricity takes on what we call skin effect, it travels as waves around the surface of the conductor. For this reason large diameter, low loss coax usually has a hollow center conductor. It make no difference electrically and makes it more flexible, lighter, and less expensive because it saves copper. Connections have to be solid and shielded because the RF can "leak", noise can be introduced, and the conductor should be tuned to the frequency carried. In short, these spring connectors are about as bad a connection as you could have picked. It is not enough that they touch the pad, you need good solid contact for a good transfer with the skin effect and to minimize loss. It seems that this problem is exasperated by poor contact. This fix it to simply improve the contact by increasing the pressure and hope to minimize the ill effects of this poor choice of contact design. To complicate things there are in fact things that can be done in software to improve the situation - this made trouble shooting harder because people tend to see these things as black and white and therefore either hardware OR software. If you want to know how software can affect this, then you will need to read back through the thread as I have already explained it twice and this answer is already too long.
Q) Should I ever expect a fix?
A) Read the OP. It was "fixed" (ie they improved the connection, but they did not re-engineer a proper fix) already. It seems if it was made in September there is a good chance it is ok or marginal. If it was made (or possibly re-manufactured?) in October it seems they are at least as good as the fix we are applying in this thread. Either they are using better contacts or they are increasing the angle to apply more pressure.
Q) Will T-mobile replace it?
A) They recognize the problem. This is what the app Samsung released is for. It resets everything to the stock settings (and nothing else). If you use it and can show unacceptable performance with the GPS (via the measurements the app makes - it is the official guide replacement), then they should replace the phone for you without any fight.
Now that you know why you should consider applying the hardware fix to your SGS, read on to determine if it may actually help your situation. I.E. does your unit's manufacture date and/or modem make this modification worth your time?
Prerequisites (Courtesy of T313C0mun1s7)
If you don't yet have at least JI6 then you need to be at least at that modem level FIRST. If you are already using the JI6 (or newer) modem and your GPS still sucks AND your phone was manufactured prior to October, then try this. Otherwise don't expect results. To determine your manufacture date, look on the box. If you no longer have the box, then look under the battery. The middle line has the serial number marked with a S/N. To the right of that will be a set of numbers with a period in the middle. It is month and year in European format, so 10.09 would be September of 2010.
To summarize:
* Phone made in October 2010 or after - this should not be needed
* You have not upgraded to at LEAST JI6 - then do that FIRST
Steps To Apply The Hardware Fix:
NOTE THAT THIS TECHNICALLY VOIDS YOUR WARRANTY especially if you choose the alternate method that involves a soldering iron
However, there is nothing noted on the phone that says if you remove this or go beyond that your warranty is voided.
Also, as goes without saying, don't blame me if you snap your GPS Antenna Contact off, break your plastics, or lose the ability to procreate!!!
* Turn off your GPS and shut down.
* Remove the back of your SGS and take out your battery, SIM Card and MicroSD Card.
* Remove the 7 screws that hold the back plastics. All you need is a Philips Head screwdriver from any jeweler's kit or glasses repair kit (you can get one from CVS/Wal-Mart, etc). Here is a video that shows you how to open up your phone. Take your time with this. I know it seems unsettling at first, but everything will be OK as long as you take your time and use a little common sense!
Be sure to watch for three small things after you get the back off. If you aren't careful, all three will sprout legs and run away :
1) Volume Rocker
2) Power Rocker
3) A little round plastic circle next to the lower right of your SIM Card slot that may fall out
* Refer to the 3rd and 4th pictures I uploaded (courtesy of androidmonkey). These photos depict the CORRECT CONTACT to gently bend up. The 4th photo depicts the position your contact should be in. You'll probably find that yours is laying flatter and thus isn't making contact with the GPS Antenna (which is on the plastic backing that you removed). As I said a second ago, gently bend this contact up. I used a flathead screwdriver from a glasses repair kit. It doesn't take much bend this contact. I started from the side that the fourth photo depicts. After I got the contact up a bit, I moved my screwdriver over 90* where the hump is and pried a little more. That's it! It's really simple. Just don't go happy with your bending. I have no experience replacing a snapped piece of copper so I can't be of any help if you destroy yours.
* Button everything back up. The back plastic will pop back in 10000% easier than it came off. Put the screws back in, pop your SIM and MicroSD back in and your battery. When you boot back up, you might wanna clear your GPS settings just for the heck of it. I did. DO NOT be shocked if it takes a few minutes to get a lock. It's probably the first time your SGS has ever had a real chance at a lock. Subsequent locks (Hot and Cold Start) will be faster.
* Boot up, leave your GPS off. Just because it can't hurt, clear your GPS settings. Here's how:
1) Download this app http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=775154
You can find it by searching for "sgstools" in the market. Click on Secret Codes then Lbstestmode. At the bottom you'll see "Delete GPS Data". Just click that!
OR
2) Open your dialer and hit *#*#1472365#*#*
Click "Delete GPS Data".
* Turn your GPS on. Wait for a lock! If you want to know what's going on, download two apps:
"GPS Status & Toolbox" by EclipSim
and
"GPS Test" by Chartcross Limited
That's it!
ALTERNATE METHOD - ADDING SOLDER TO YOUR GPS CONTACT
*WARNING* As I mentioned earlier IF YOU CHOOSE THIS METHOD THERE IS ZERO CHANCE OF YOUR PHONE REMAINING UNDER WARRANTY *WARNING*
If you feel inclined to modify your phone in a much more permanent way, you can opt to add some solder on top of the contact (no need to bend the contact up, in fact, don't). I attached a zip with some pics that show what two posters, regp and Mannymal did. I've soldered a few things in the past, but I'm by no means an expert. If you choose to do this, a few things to remember.
* First, seriously consider avoiding this if you have no experience with a soldering iron. In what I've seen on a limited base, you'll get minimal SNR gain in return for the effort that goes into this. I can't emphasis this enough.
* There are probably a 100 tutorials on how to solder floating around on YouTube, watch them (all).
* The absolute largest diameter solder I would use is .022.
* Find the smallest tip possible.
* Heat the CONTACT with your soldering iron, not your solder, or you will create what is called a cold solder joint that will probably lead to your GPS not working at all on down the road. You have to get the contact hot enough to receive the solder, which is touched to the part (in our case, the contact) that you want to apply the solder to.
* Be careful not to make your solder to high. I suggest looking at the photo that shows the angle of the contact after it's been raised and using that as your benchmark. We want to make contact with the GPS Antenna, not break the thing when we snap the back plastic on.
* If you end up with two much solder you can either clean the tip of your soldering iron and touch the hot tip to the solder to remove some or you can use an emery board to file it down.
* Use an small emery board (nail file essentially) to file down and smooth off your joint. I suggest doing this holding the phone upside down so you don't end up with 1000 tiny solder particles floating around your phone.
* REMEMBER, phones are tiny. These boards are tiny. A soldering iron that is too hot left on ANY board for too long will destroy it. Multiply this rule x10 for delicate parts.
Good luck.
Observable Data Changes
(Grabbed from this thread after several days of playing with this fix).
Accuracy: 16-28 feet stationary 38-50 feet moving (moving accuracy has improved and is now on par with stationary numbers since I started running the Stock JL4 Rom)
Average SNR: 22-35. Obviously you'll always have one or two that are lower and one or two higher. My max I've observed was 42.
Number of Sats Locked/In View: 8/11 most of the time. Yesterday afternoon I was locked on 10/10 with a 22 foot accuracy inside. I've had 11/14 before as well, just depends on the time of day.
Cold Start Lock: 30 seconds
Hot Start Lock: 5-15 seconds
For reference, my Garmin Nuvi is currently connected to 7/10 with a 16-18 foot accuracy and my Vibrant is connected to 7/10 with a 21-25 foot accuracy. (stationary of course)
Unnecessary re-routing: No
Wandering on Google Nav/Lost Signal with Nav: Very rarely. For me it happens when I lose signal which is only if the phone is resting on my jeans. If it's in my cupholder, center console, hand, etc it's fine. Earlier today I lost signal with it in my cupholder but I was traveling in an area where my Garmin Nuvi only had a connection to 5 satellites.
My Tracks: No data from me yet
There are some after screen shots in this post.
Other notes: I'm on the road a lot. Today is my first day to really extensively test it. Basically, it's MUCH better. Is it perfect? No, but I will say that unlike these other fixes that involve changes in lbstestmode and reset apps that only last for a couple of hours at best, my GPS performance has been very consistent ever since I adjusted the antenna contact. Is it as good as my old Blackberries with signal strength? No. How does it compare to other Android devices? I have no clue.
What I do know is that it works well enough for me to be comfortable not having to grab my Nuvi everytime I switch vehicles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wrap Up
I hope this works for those of you like me that have tried almost every firmware update, tweak, etc. Between this fix and JL4, all I can say is that this device is probably as near to perfect as it'll ever be. I've been running this fix for well over a week and I've experienced no signs of the modified contact losing it's contact with the antenna.
If You Still Have Problems
* Even though you used the Samsung GPS Restore App (Found in the market for Vibrant/Captivate only)
* Even though you deleted GPS Data
* Even though you have your WiFi Off like Plato56 recommends in this post
* Even if you tried a full system wipe
Don't panic if you don't have a ton of locks. Like mentioned above, there is still a firmware component to this issue. I see times where mine doesn't want to lock. Usually if I turn GPS off and then turn it back on it runs smoothly from there on out. Depending on where you live, time of day may make a difference. Inevitably, in the afternoons I may only get 6 of 11 locked on. All other times I can get 9-11 of 11 or 11 of 14, etc. Bear with it. This fix is NOT a silver bullet, but give it a day or two of reasonable playing time to determine if it helped.
For example, right now I'm indoors locked on 7/11 with a 21 foot accuracy and SNR's averaging 31. I used to see 0/3 with SNR's averaging 29. That's a definite improvement. If any other Android was in the same position it would probably show 8/11 with a 10 foot accuracy and SNR's averaging over 65.
So take it for what it's worth, but the fix is DEFINITELY worth the effort!
ADDITIONAL TWEAK
Check out this thread here and read through the OP carefully. A few days ago I flashed "S.gps.zip" and I've had great results with it on Bionix 1.3.1 with the KA7 modem. I didn't see an increase in accuracy, but I did see a HUGE improvement on the speed my GPS locked and the number of birds locked too. I played around with all of the 2.2 modems last night and they all saw improved results.
If you decide to flash one of those zips, I recommend making a Nandroid backup first. In reading through the thread it appears that there are a few people that had their flashes result in broken GPS's. I have no idea why, I'd imagine it's because they didn't clear GPS data and they just think it's broken. I recommend making a backup, shutting off your GPS, booting into CWM, flashing the zip, rebooting, clearing GPS data, turning your GPS on and enjoying locks. And, as always, I recommend using GPS Test by Mike Lockwood to test your GPS every time you make a change.
The Super GPS should work on any ROM on an Vibrant, but it looks like a lot of people have tried it on 2.2 ROMS so be aware that, as always, there's the chance you may brick your device. If it works for you, be sure to thank jellette for his work. As always, I take no responsibility if this messes up your phone. I'm just relaying what worked for me.
UPDATE: 7/31/11
I should have posted this a couple of months ago. I also have a theory about why sometimes this fix fails over time. For example, I run Overstock 2.4.1 and I often flash the S.gps2.zip when I redo my system. It's been a fantastic combo on Bionix 1.3.1, but often, after a few weeks my GPS begins to turn retarded and will eventually no longer lock. In the past I've always believed it's purely because the antenna contacts have started to relax. However, what I've discovered is that when I go back into CWM and reflash my kernel and reflash the GPS zip, everything is happy and perfect again. I'm by no means a hardware genius or a developer. I'm just an average end user that loves to tinker with things and be methodical in testing, but I'm starting to believe that there truly is something going on that corrupts our GPS Drivers over time (in reference back to how we know Samsung screwed the pooch on firmware for the GPS Receiver).
So, that said, before you crack your phone open over and over yanking and bending on contacts, reflash your kernel and the GPS Zip of your choice. And, like I've always said before, if the hardware fix doesn't seem to work for you when it seems to work for others on the same ROM as you, try another kernel, and try it more than once. I still fully believe that every GPS Receiver on every SGS can be made usable. It's not perfect, but it's a strong improvement from not being able to obtain a lock. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=16026963&postcount=12

Q&A
This thread is getting long so I am creating this Q&A post to answer many of the most common questions.
Due credits go to those that originally asked and answered these questions. Obviously this thread is the result of the efforts of many people.
Q) Is it a hardware issue? Why do different ROMs / Modems effect this?
A) It's complicated. We are talking about very high frequency RF here, you gotta understand how electricity acts when you reach these frequencies to fully get this, but I will summarize. At zero hertz or DC current electricity flows through the body or center of the conductor. As long as you have enough conductor to carry the required current you are good. So the type of spring contact they used is fine for DC, in fact I went looking for replacement contacts and the only thing I can find are designed for either battery tabs or for grounding contacts. As you go higher in frequency the AC current of electricity takes on what we call skin effect, it travels as waves around the surface of the conductor. For this reason large diameter, low loss coax usually has a hollow center conductor. It make no difference electrically and makes it more flexible, lighter, and less expensive because it saves copper. Connections have to be solid and shielded because the RF can "leak", noise can be introduced, and the conductor should be tuned to the frequency carried. In short, these spring connectors are about as bad a connection as you could have picked. It is not enough that they touch the pad, you need good solid contact for a good transfer with the skin effect and to minimize loss. It seems that this problem is exasperated by poor contact. This fix it to simply improve the contact by increasing the pressure and hope to minimize the ill effects of this poor choice of contact design. To complicate things there are in fact things that can be done in software to improve the situation - this made trouble shooting harder because people tend to see these things as black and white and therefore either hardware OR software. If you want to know how software can affect this, then you will need to read back through the thread as I have already explained it twice and this answer is already too long.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) Should I try this fix?
A) Only if you can not get your phone replaced under warranty. If you can not and meet the prerequisites in the OP, then you are a good candidate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) How do I update to JI6? In the release notes of the Super_IO kernel, it mentions it has the UVJL1 modem. is this more recent than JI6??
A) Yes, JL1 is more recent than JI6. The nomenclature uses lexicograpical unicode values.
1. Check the first unit. The first unit in JI6 and JL1 are both 'J', so look at the next unit.
2. 'I' in the former, 'L' in the latter. 'L' comes after 'I' in the alphabet, so it's more recent.
3. You can stop here, because you've already determined that JL* is more recent than JI*. Any units that come after this are to distinguish within the L- or I-series.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) How do I reset the GPS setting?
A) Open your dialer and hit *#*#1472365#*#* or maybe *#3214789650# (I need clarification on these)
OR
The Samsung GPS Restore app (APK attached to this post)
OR
Since the Feburary 2nd, 2011 Market update you can find it here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.sec.samsung.GpsRestore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) Should we assume that any phone manufactured before 10/10 has these problems?
A) No, I would not think so. Something like this is usually a intermittent manufacturing flaw and would not affect everyone or there would be an even larger outrage about it.
Look at it this way. The spring contacts were designed to make contact without too much pressure when the back is properly in place. GOOD engineering would have accounted for slight variations in manufacturing and quality control and would have made the spring contacts overshoot the required distance a little to assure 100% contact in all situations. In this case I think they forgot to account for that and designed them to just touch, invariably some make intermittent contact and some fall just short of good solid contact (there are prior posts about how poor contact can get worse over time due to oxidation and arcing), but at least we have no reports of totally non-working GPS where they would have failed to touch outright. Chances are when October came around one of two things happened.
They decided to fix the issue and reenginerred the design to make better contact
The manufacturer ran out of the old contacts the the new shipment just work better
Either way, although this is a common issue, I don't see the evidence that it affected all pre-October phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) Any hints on how to get the back off after removing the screws? I watched the YouTube video, but I'm not having any luck with my normal sized fingernails.
A) It is very stubborn, the most important tool you have is patience. Just take your time. If you really need more than just you fingers here are some other options.
Set of Safe Open Pry Tools - http://www.repairsuniverse.com/prytools.html
Thinner than credit card type cards such as a Bi-Mart membership card, plastic business cards that are 1/2 thickness of a credit card, laminated ID badge, old Subway rewards card.
Guitar Pick
The plastic from a clear "clam shell" type package that everything seems to come in now. You know, the ones that seem impossible to open.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) CRAP!!! I BROKE MY TAB (This question covers Soldering)
A) Relax, take three deep breaths, all is not lost.
What you want to do is replace the tab with a small mound of solder to bridge the space between the boards and create a contact so the two pads touch. You want a decent amount of surface to touch and you want it flat for the best contact. You need the mound smooth and round because you are working with high frequency signals. Follow the instructions below carefully. If you need more details they are in this thread.
1) If you are experienced in soldering most will be second nature to you except for the fact that you are not actually soldering anything to anything, you are just making a mound on a pad. If you are not experienced then the first step is to WATCH THESE VIDEOS (A) and (B) then PRACTICE until you are proficient in the basics of heating, soldering, and removing the iron cleanly leaving a good joint.
2) Read this comic book (trust me) --> http://mightyohm.com/files/soldercomic/FullSolderComic_20110409.pdf
3) Now if you are confident that you are ready to actually touch a hot soldering iron to the inside of your phone lets continue.
De-solder the old broken contact from the pad using the soldering iron and either some wick or a solder-sucker (you can also use a cheap rubber bulb, but they rarely work well)
Use the soldering iron and wick or solder-sucker to remove any remaining solder from the pad. It can still be silver, but should be flat.
Realizing that you will remove a little solder with the iron when you pull it away, make a small, smooth, shiny, and round mound of solder on the lower pad just a little taller then you need for good contact.
It is important in this step to not leave any metal filing behind on the board or it might short something out. So do this step holding the phone upside-down so they fall away. File the top of the mound with an emery board so you have a flat spot parallel with the pad. Don't file too much at first.
Check the height of the mound by puting the top board back on. If needed file a little more and recheck. Go slow, don't try to take too much off at once. When the hight is right it should just barely be too tall. You want good solid contact, but you do not want the board to be stressed or bend.
If all looks good check again for hidden shavings and blow it off real good just to make sure.
If you mess up at any point just de-solder the pad and try again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) What are people's setting in LBSTestMode?
A) Factory Defaults - an earlier question covered how to get back there
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) Will this work with the GT-I9000 or the Captivate?
A) Most likely, yes. We have even had some people with those phones report back with positive results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) I did this hardware fix, but I am still losing locks. Now what?
A) Here is what the OFA (Original Fix Artist) Plato56 has to say:
1. Before anything else, make shure your WiFI radio is OFF. I dont mean not connected, I don't mean out of range, I mean hardware swiched off threw your settings or via the drop down status bar.
2. Use the Samsung GPS restore to get you LBS settings to default.
3. Update your modem to one of the 2.2 versions. Im particularly happy with JL4 modem myself
4. Learn to use ODIN!!!! Use this to reload your firmware of choice. Prior to flashing you favorate ROM, Always flash back to JDF (BONE STOCK FIRMWARE).
5. If you dont know what im talking about in 4, then go to the developers section and read, read, read.
6. If you have any other questions refer to sujection 1 first, then ask. Honistly, alot of people have put some work into verifing if this fix works and testing with various software, the least you can do is read this body of work and you just might end up with a working GPS.
7. My last tip of the day. Be patent with your first locks, the GPS does improve the more data it collects. This also means dont delete your GPS data unless you changed modems or are having real lock and or accuracy issues
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) Does this fix drift?
A) There have been a couple that have mentioned that it does fix the drift, but I think there may have been others that say they get better locks but still get some drift. I do believe though that everyone who has done the driving test with it has reported that it tracks better now and actually shows them on the correct roads, where before it didn't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) What are the other contacts?
A) Opposite side is Wi-Fi, bottom is cellular.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) OK, so I can bend it up, or replace it with a bit of solder. Is that all?
A) Of course not. Some like to stick a little piece of plastic under the tab rather than try to bend it. Just a little sliver about as wide as the contact cut off a credit card should work. Your Mileage may vary, in my mind if you drop the phone that plastic is gonna be floating around in there somewhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) So inside I see. . .
A) Stop! go outside. GPS was not designed to help you get from your bathroom to your kitchen. GPS signals are low power signals that have to travel all the way from an orbital satellite. Low frequencies penetrate well, and bend around objects, but they require a lot of power to transmit over distance. High frequencies travel much further with less power and remains in a fairly strait line, but it does not penetrate very well. Guess what GPS uses. So don't make it try to penetrate your roof.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Q) So there are two apps listed to test GPS and . . .
A) I've noticed a big difference between the two apps called "GPS Test". Try using the one written by Mike Lockwood (he's on the Google GPS team).
http://www.androlib.com/android.appl...stest-qjx.aspx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AND FINALLY
Q) What does tonight taste like?
A) Tonight tastes like chinese food and whiskey with coconut water
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A final note about satellites and tracking said hunks of orbital equipment
I have noticed a lot of people are wanting to compare signal levels. This is fine on a superficial level, and there should be some level of consistency as long as you live on roughly the same latitude as the person you are comparing with. As Einstein said - everything is relative. With that in mind I thought I would share a post I made in another thread. There is cool stuff in here - so check it out.
T313C0mun1s7 said:
Another thing that you have to realize is that the satellites themselves are a variable. The only way to make a satellite stationary is to put it into orbit directly on the equator, falling at the exact same rate the earth spins, and in the same direction. Even at that there is still a little wobble in a figure 8 pattern.
So GPS sats are anything but stationary, but they are flying at great speeds overhead coming in and out of view by their own rite at any time. At the speeds they fly the distances to you change by the mile rather quickly. So it should be no surprise that doing your testing repeatedly will never yield the same results twice. There are also a lot of other factors involved as well.
The point is that you are now getting very acceptable and usable results from your GPS consistently, even if you never get anything as great as your first time. Maybe you will get those strong of signals again, but even if you don't you seems to be an par with what the majority of people have reported so far.
FYI - If you would like to see some real time tracking of GPS sats that you should be able to see (THIS IS REALLY COOL) go to http://www.n2yo.com and click the GPS link at the top of the page. It will load a page of sats that are visible from your location. Click the select all box and then click the track selected satellites button. It will load a world map with the orbital paths of the sats, then the sats themselves. You can watch them move and even select them for more information on each satellite. This is not limited to GPS satellites if you want to keep playing with it. The point is that if you watch it for a little bit you can see pretty quickly as they move relative to the world map they are on just how many miles (or kilos) they cover in a fairly short time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Great Post
I have been looking for this information everywhere. I cannot wait until I try this. Thank you^^

How do I update to JI6? i'm running Macnut 14 rom with the Super_IO kernel.
In the release notes of the Super_IO kernel, it mentions it has the UVJL1 modem. is this more recent than JI6??

This might be a stupid question, but how do you tell the manufacture date of the phone. My box just has a date on it (but doesn't say what that date is for), which is 08/10/2010. Is this it?

salvador3 said:
How do I update to JI6? i'm running Macnut 14 rom with the Super_IO kernel.
In the release notes of the Super_IO kernel, it mentions it has the UVJL1 modem. is this more recent than JI6??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, JL1 is more recent than JI6. The nomenclature uses lexicograpical unicode values.
1. Check the first unit. The first unit in JI6 and JL1 are both 'J', so look at the next unit.
2. 'I' in the former, 'L' in the latter. 'L' comes after 'I' in the alphabet, so it's more recent.
3. You can stop here, because you've already determined that JL* is more recent than JI*. Any units that come after this are to distinguish within the L- or I-series.
Just gently bent my piece of metal up. Giving it 10 min to find satellites and will edit this post to report.
EDIT: HOLY CRAPOLA! In the time it took me to write this post, I got 11 satellites on a cold start, MS based, with supl.google.com. I'm going to keep it on hot start now that it's got some locks. I've never run a GPS test at my current location (indoors too!), but I usually got 1 or 2 about 30 miles south of here (outdoors). I can't verify that it's the alteration that helped, but my GPS is definitely better now. Much thanks to OP.
RE-EDIT: Huh, this is weird. I tried to exit out of app but it froze. Waited a minute and it exited out, but without the expected transition animation. Tried to open it again, but the GPS icon in the notification bar wasn't flashing so I rebooted. Now I don't get any satellites with the same settings as before. A couple reboots later, everything is going according to plan.

salvador3 said:
How do I update to JI6? i'm running Macnut 14 rom with the Super_IO kernel.
In the release notes of the Super_IO kernel, it mentions it has the UVJL1 modem. is this more recent than JI6??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If ur running a 2.2 ROM u are past JI6....
Sent from my Vibrant w/ Onyx 4.2 Overkill.....

Hung0702 said:
RE-EDIT: Huh, this is weird. I tried to exit out of app but it froze. Waited a minute and it exited out, but without the expected transition animation. Tried to open it again, but the GPS icon in the notification bar wasn't flashing so I rebooted. Now I don't get any satellites with the same settings as before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, relax, I found that this is not that unusual depending on what ROM / Modem and settings your using. It happend to me with JK2 stock and and stock modem. If your running one of the 2.2 builds update your modem to JL4 or JL1. Also i have found that reseting the GPS data can help after you change modems. Before geting into the unit again, i would recoment clearing your gps data and reverting to STOCK gps setings. MS mode does in some cases make locks look faster, but a weak network connect can cause problems. This is actualy why, i think, that Samsung is using standalone mode as it saves the bird info better. Im not shure about this but for me STOCK GPS SETTINGS WORK!!! Try them before opening up the phone a 2nd time.
As long as you've done the mod correctly and have good contact, you should be in better shape. There is the possablity that you did not bend the contact high enough and it settled back in. DONT OVER BEND but maby just a hair more. Also, dont forget to clean the contacts with a mild solvent as a weak contact will cause oxidation . I use a q-tip and alcohol. Dont use tunner cleaner, i tried this and being non conductinve, i had a problem at for a bit.
Remember, this is also a software issue so dont panic if you do the mod, get good results and then things change. Here is my curent configuration for reference.
Macnut 13
JL4 modem
STOCK GPS SETTINGS
Rom was loaded from a CLEAN Oden version of JFD with eveything formated etc..
Im locking with 8-11 birds out of 13 visable in under 15 seconds with accuracy that under 20ft standing still and 25-35 in a moving car. There are times that things will get a bit worse, but by compairing those times to my Garmin, I beleave this a result of the GPS network or other enviromental issues. I DO have "use wireless networks" as it seams to reduce GPS wander on the JL1 modem , at least in my area. Without it on I get an occational jump but it always finds it way back to good in a very short time. It up to you if you want to use it, its not nessasay, but sometimes helps.
To everyone who might suggest that I'm just one of the lucky one.. When I got this phone, I could not lock on ANYTHING. I could see a few birds, hit some sometimes, get a lock after 5 minutes and lose after the phone went into lock mode etc... you know, all the problems that eveyone else has. Now with the contact mod and updated modems, the results are better than an iPhone and rival my Garmin stand alone GPS.

salvador3 said:
How do I update to JI6? i'm running Macnut 14 rom with the Super_IO kernel.
In the release notes of the Super_IO kernel, it mentions it has the UVJL1 modem. is this more recent than JI6??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your fine, your current config is good, My advice, just update to the JL4 modem.

How do I reset the GPS setting?

Stick Thread!

How do I reset the GPS setting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The most dummy proof way (not that your dumb, I just like simple solutions) is to download this app http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=775154
Click on Secret Codes then Lbstestmode. At the bottom you'll see "gps reset". Just click that!
Or open your dialer and hit *#*#1472365#*#*
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

wow holy crap this fix worked. i live in apartments and after i did this, it locked on to sats for the FIRST time EVER within 30 secs. im amazed this actually worked lol.

so should we assume that any phone manufactured before those dates has these problems?
mine was manufactured before the date, but now that im on 2.2 i usually get a lock on 7 or 8/12 Sats....
but when using google Nav, i get several re-routes and lost signals...
so im not sure if this would help me??

Any hints on how to get the back off after removing the screws? I watched the YouTube video, but I'm not having any luck with my normal sized fingernails.

kboater said:
so should we assume that any phone manufactured before those dates has these problems?
mine was manufactured before the date, but now that im on 2.2 i usually get a lock on 7 or 8/12 Sats....
but when using google Nav, i get several re-routes and lost signals...
so im not sure if this would help me??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got my phone in late July and my GPS performance matches exactly what the OP describes AFTER he did the fix. My phone is pure stock JI6, with no HW mods. So, it doesn't seem valid to assume all pre-October phones have the problem.

Confirmed works... Thanks to all.
- All screen shots were taken from the same indoors location. Phone was sitting in a window.
- There are two before and two after screen shots. They represent the range of results.
- I'm running Macnut R14 with JL4
Before
After

Try this
JD - You might need to go online and order an actual case pry tool. They're usually included in disassembly kits for iPhones etc. Maybe try a guitar pick??
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

kboater said:
so should we assume that any phone manufactured before those dates has these problems?
mine was manufactured before the date, but now that im on 2.2 i usually get a lock on 7 or 8/12 Sats....
but when using google Nav, i get several re-routes and lost signals...
so im not sure if this would help me??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, I would not think so. Something like this is usually a intermittent manufacturing flaw and would not affect everyone or there would be an even larger outrage about it.
Look at it this way. The spring contacts were designed to make contact without too much pressure when the back is properly in place. GOOD engineering would have accounted for slight variations in manufacturing and quality control and would have made the spring contacts overshoot the required distance a little to assure 100% contact in all situations. In this case I think they forgot to account for that and designed them to just touch, invariably some make intermittent contact and some fall just short of good solid contact (there are prior posts about how poor contact can get worse over time due to oxidation and arcing), but at least we have no reports of totally non-working GPS where they would have failed to touch outright. Chances are when October came around one of two things happened.
They decided to fix the issue and reenginerred the design to make better contact
The manufacturer ran out of the old contacts the the new shipment just work better
Either way, although this is a common issue, I don't see the evidence that it affected all pre-October phones.

I'll post screenshots later today. For now I can definitevly confirm that this fix improves gps signal levels and performance.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Solving the thermal problems of HD2 or other snapdragon powered devices

UPDATE -
As of June 14. 2011 it appears the only viable way to solve this problem is to reheat the cpu with specialized equipment. I am currently testing if this can be done in a standard gas/electric oven (NOT MICROWAVE !!). If successful this method will solve the problem and the following guide (cpu cooling system) may help prevent it from happening again. Only building this cooling system is not enough and will not solve your problems.
Hello dear members of XDA
First of all please excuse my english, I will try to explain myself as well as I can. It will be a long post, it could be boring, it could be scary or whatever you like but bear with me on this one.
So.. got myself a HTC (T-Mobile) HD2. A bit late in the game, but hell no, still a good phone. I've dreamed of having one but couldn't afford. Anyway finally i got one. A second hand broken one, damn it.
As i found out the problem is pretty common: damn thing restart itself - thermally related - the old CPU overheat problem. By searching the net I found out that it's pretty common with some HTC models. HD2 has it, Desire has it, Nexus One has it, hell even some xperia models have it.. about half of the devices powered by anything from the Snapdragon series could have it.
The problem could be easely described as : phone hanging, restarts, the dreaded 7-8 short vibrate sequence - phone locked etc.
Mine was worst then i've seen on the forums or with other people. It locked itself for just about every reason i could get. Taking pictures, browsing the menu, using gps, the browser, 3g or wifi, watching a movie ... all concluded with restarts or lock-ups after some couple of minutes. I've found out that keeping the phone at 4-5 degrees celsius would solve my problems in most cases, but anything above 10-15 degrees would make the thing go crazy.
Well, I'm pasionate about electronics, development in this area, trying to solve problems and things like that. Also experienced in heat and semiconductor related problems. I also had one macbook air that suffered from core shutdown because of overheating (also a well known problem for MBA rev 1.0) and managed to design an alternate cooling system that solved the problem. So i gave it a shot, i know there are many users that have similar problems and altrough i don't suggest them explicitly to make this hacks to their phones.. this is one way to solve the problem if you buy your unit second hand or don't have some form of warranty.
So here we go.
Big fat warning!!! Don't attempt these things with your phones unless you are familiar with the concepts or the tools involved in the process. Also, there is a real risk to permanently damage your phone. Not just real.. but big if you get something wrong.
First step is to run some simple tests to determine the cause of the problem or the range it extends to.
So, I used a multimeter with a K type thermal probe to measure the temperature of various components of the phone during intensive use.
this is the back of the mainboard of my HD2. If you notice, HTC placed a blue-ish thermal pad over one metallic shield covering the back components. I don't know what's the purpose as the back casing in that area is made of plastic - no heat dissipation, or a bad one. Anyway that's a good place to place my probe. Some tape holded the probe in position. Because we don't have perfect mechanical contact between the probe tip and the casing or chips i expect +1 or +2 degrees celsius to be added to each measurement i will later describe.
i now placed the battery over the back of the phone and secured it with some other tape and some toothpicks
we're at 19.3 degrees. That's were we'll going to start from.
there's a usefull little app that allows users to overclock or stress test their phones cpu. Found it here on XDA, i'll use it for some heat making purposes.
as you can see.. we're already at 25.8 degrees, after 5 minutes of testing.. not to mention the actual heat making primary suspect - qualcomm chipset is on the other side. At 29.5 degrees at this point.. the phone locked itself. I reapeted the experiment 2 more times - got exactly the same result.. at least the readings were consistent.
Ok, i then removed the motherboard to take some readings from the actual CPU.
same procedure.. next readings. - at around 33.4 - 34.2 degrees (varies) on the CPU itself the phone will either restart or lock itself up. So you see how serious my problem is. Summer will come so I won't be able to use my phone...
Measures have to be taken.
Let's make a small introduction about heat related to semiconductors.
Well, simply put a conductor (semiconductors act the same way) generates some amount of heat when an electric current is passed along it. This is because of the fact that small electrons moving along the conductor (in a simple way that's the definition of any electric current) will ocasionaly collide with the atoms of the material their passing through. In the collision the electron loses some amount of energy. That energy is heat. Also, heat itself can be described at an atomic level as the intensification of natural ocuring brownian movement of atoms. If they move a lot, if they are more agitated they create more heat. If they are more agitated, they are more likely to be hit by passing electrons. So a hot conductor is more likely to get even hotter because of that. There is a point were the heat generated makes the conductor's atoms prone to more hits from passing electrons in kind of like a geometric progression. That's called thermal runaway. It will tend to destroy electronics by overheating, melting or burning themselves up.
Back to our phones now. The CPU produces heat. Because of the same effect described above. The heat in this case will either melt or break the small "balls" that comprise the BGA matrix on what these cips are mounted on. The small balls will either melt (extreme cases) or dilatate with increasing temperature. However it seems most of the new processors used by HTC are mounted in some epoxy resin that has both dilatation point and melting point higher then the flux and welding compound used to solder those cips. So the actual cip will tend to stay fixed in a particular position, unable to expand or contract with temperature variations, but the balls used in the BGA matrix underneath it will contract or expand with these variations. This could lead to a case when at least one of that balls (some couple hundreds in total) become "loose" or out of position, thus breaking the electrical contact it should have made. Therefore our problems. At fist large amounts of heat must be applied in order to actually break the bond between the cpu and board, but after that, once broken the tiny links are very sensible to temperature variations and they will expand or contract freely.
Most users notice that at it's core, the problem seemed related to overheating (in the begining) but after time it's effects are degenerative.. phones seem to restart with no apparent reason. It's still overheating, but things are starting to get more and more worse as the chip and it's connections become more sensitive to heat variations. Thus, even small variations now produce these problems - my CPU restarts at 34 degrees .. that sucks.
So, my only option was to try to reheat the cpu in the attempt to partially melt the broken "balls" in the bga matrix and hopefully.. i repeat HOPEFULLY they remake contact with the mainboard. A re-ball of this chip is not possible, as the resin placed around it by HTC doesn't melt at the normal temperature i could remove the chip itself, so heating it at even higher temperatures would risk killing the cpu long before the resin melts. Strange move by HTC to make things like this.
Anyway.. here goes nothing..
I've placed the usual aluminium foil designed to protect surrounding components by the heat generated by the rework station and the hot air used to heat up the CPU.
I preheated the CPU for about 10 minutes, from both sides of the board, then switched to heating it at 360 degrees. I applied even pressure above it after it was heated in order to tighten the space between it and the board, just a little bit. THIS IS VERY RISKY. Normally not recommended because of the risk damaging the BGA. In this case the resin would prevent me from moving the chip to much so it's less risky. Not safe.. but less risky.
I've let the board to cool on it's own for half an hour and repeated the temperature monitoring tests.
Now i had an increase of maximum temperature before a restart from 34 degrees on the cpu to about 42. It's not much but it's a start. However above these temperature.. the phone will still lock or restart.
I went for another round of reheating with the hot air station. After this, i've got slightly better results. Some 2-3 degrees more. My lucky break was when i suspected thermal runaway for the CPU. So i tried to make some sort of a heat sink for that chip using some mica foils for to220 can transistors, some thermal grease and a bunch of aluminum and copper foils. My theory was that heat dissipation will eventually accelerate faster above a specific level, a point from witch thermal runaway occur. In my case in the initial tests, even after the phone locked itself and i manually restarted (battery out - in) the temperature continued to increase even faster altrough the phone wasn't doing anything intensive.
The role of my "heat sink" would be to dissipate more heat rapidly and in some manner to press the cpu against the board.
After I placed the mica foils directly above the cpu with thermal grease above and beyond i mounted back the metal shield over that area. On it, i placed some more silicon paste and some thick copper foil (used in some broken laptops i have over here). It looks ugly but.. worth a shot:
after that i begin making the rest of the heat sink using aluminum foil. I folded about 12 layers, between each of them having placed... more thermal grease and at the 6-7 layer another round of mica crystal foil.
Here's the aluminum foil
I then pressed the foils very hard between two flat surfaces in order to remove the excess thermal grease.
I "anodized" the first layer (the one in contact with the cpu shielding) with some ferric chloride. Before that, the board looked like this:
After the logic board was mounted back, i remade all the connections and after some preliminary tests, mounted the phone back together. It now looks like this
I only have to re-attach the serial no. and imei, plastic sticker.
Of course i then run tests. I heated up the phone with a hair dryer to simulate a hot summer day. About 40 degrees, just to be sure. I then run cpu stress tests and a full divx movie (impossible in the past). On preliminary testing, i had indications that i avoided the thermal runaway the cpu now running stable at 24 degrees (19.3 in the room - ambient temperature). No more, heating up by itself to about 40 degrees then restart.
On the final testing, with the phone put together, i heated it with the hair dryer and achieved 40 degrees. I started it and run stress tests. No more lockups or restarts, not even a single one. However with the phone put together i can't measure inside temperature on it's components. As i feel it, it get's warmer, it heats up to some degree, but now it's spread all over it's surface. For some particular reason it doesn't restart anymore.
I then tried, cpu stress test, wlan connection, pc connection and browsing the net all at the same time. NO RESTART I watched a full 1.30 hour movie at max playable quality, the phone was really hot (43-44 degree at it's surface) but still no problems.
It appears that for the moment i saved the phone. However, future behavior is still to be determined.
I'll get back with more testing, in the following days and eventually i hope to devise a general method for building heat sinks for phones (yeaah, ridiculous....) using combinations of metal and thermal conductive cristals. The ideea is to find out if reheating the chip by hot air station can be avoided (this involves the most risk). But the start is promising. By the time warranties will expire and phones like the new droids or winmo 7's start to break from thermal problems, maybe i'll have some sort of a more user friendly solution.
EDIT JUNE 04.2011
since i have a dead hd2 motherboard here, i tried to remove the cpu to expose the BGA soldering. Just for fun, no chance of BGA reball, as there aren't any tools available for this particular chip. The resin prevents a proper removal, at about 450 degrees celsius it was still kind of hard, so i had to forcefully remove the chip and break some of the BGA. The chip is very thin, kind of like a micro sd card. It heats up pretty quick and fast, the solder points underneath it got melted in about 2-3 min at 370 degrees celsius.
Here's how it looks.
This is the motherboard without the chip. The BGA matrix is broken, some balls were simply ripped out when i forcefully removed the chip.
This is the actual chip compared with a mini sd and and standard sd card.
...and this is the underside of the chip. belive it or not, the chip is actually alive and it's pins are ok. It cannot be used because it cannot be properly soldered to a board. Guess i'm gonna punch a hole through it and use it at my key chain, along with a laptop cpu already there
In the following days i will experiment with the solder points&materials in order to try to produce a more safer method to reheat future boards with thermal problems. It seems this board died because of overheating and a short circuit made over the center of the array by 3 solder balls that got in contact once they were melted.

You sir are the man.
I personally do not have any over heating issues with my HD2. But there is so many people here on XDA tbat do. So your work will be greatly appriciate and followed here. From what you have posted you may just be onto something that will be very useful not just to HD2 owners but to a large veriety of smartphone and maybe even tablet owners, present and future. I too find the the epoxy resin that HTC placed around the chip odd. It is almost like HTC did not want this part of the hardware to be replacable. But make you have to buy a whole new main board, corperate crap
Anyways please keep up the good work and I will be following this thread very attentiavely. So please do post back here with your future findings.

The epoxy resin is there to hold the CPU (which is the biggest and probably the heaviest part on the PCB) in it's place, and thus making it more resistant to mechanical forces (such as accidental drops, shocks, etc...).
It could also be, that HTC wanted to prevent access to the CPU-s I/O pins, making it impossible (or at least very difficult) to desolder it. This way it is difficult to "reaserchers - hackers" to chart a schematic diagram of the connections between CPU, flash chip, ram, etc..., or to attach logic probes to the IO lines, and that leads to being difficult to make software hacks such as HardSPL, or sim unlocking, etc... I know that there are other methods to connect to CPU (such as JTAG), but fewer options mean, less chances to succeed.
B.r.:
d3m0n

This is an excellent post and thnx you for your testing and investigation. Do let us know how your unit goes within a week of real world testing.
The engineers @ htc should have incorporated a better CPU cooling solution on hd2. Your testing and modifications are a wealth of information.

thanks for the support
The resin on the cpu has a higher melting point then that of the solder joints of the actual cpu to motherboard. I guess the reason for it's presence is that when the phone is hot (and HTC knows the cpu can gen hot) the solder joints become less mechanical resistant, they could be more easily broken. In case of a BGA mechanical failure, the resin however would pose a problem as the chip can't be desoldered safely or even reheated. I took a risk there.
I don't think HTC didn't want us to desolder the chip because of JTAG pinnout mapping. Even with acces to the pins, it would be very hard to find the pins without some form of CPU datasheet. Same goes for CPLD for example.
Anyway, at this time i still don't know if either reheating or making some sort of cooling system helped me to solve this problem. So far, still good, not a single problem noticed so far. I can now reflash the phone, before the procedure, i experienced that vibration pattern during a flash. I've put android on it, stress test it even more, i'm now trying to play some 720p on it. It still heats up, it feels as warm in the hand as before, but for whatever reason, it doesn't restart anymore.
However...more testing still to come.
On another note, i'm now working on a broken Eten M810, some CPU problems. It this case, the CPU doesn't have that resin, however the nand memory has. Different brand, different choices.

as i found out until now the steps from a good working hd2 to this problems are something like this:
1. phone working ok. mainboard (lower part of the device) heats in some conditions - demanding programs etc battery can reach about 40-45 degrees max. without problems. The phone will restart or freeze (cpu halt) in any of these situations :
- battery temp exceeds 45 degrees and stays over this value for at least 5-10 minutes in order to trigger the thermistor used to measure the temperature in this area over i2c. at this time, it will prevent further charging and restart or lock the phone. This is normal behavior.
-CPU exceeds 60-65 degrees (exact value still to be determined. i'm trying to get acces to some similar chipset datasheets). This produces CPU halt. Depending on what you're doing, the halt will either reset the phone or simply lock it up. Restarting by soft reset or by itself will probably return the user back in the home screen with the phone still working. This is also normal behavior, related to qualcomm chip.
2. phone starts to malfunction. This condition starts by either large variation in temperature - mainboard al low temperature gets fast to full load or simply sustained full load. All HTC HD2's revisions have the same type of soldering in the cpu area. Visually speaking (no conclusive data yet) first revision used a bit more epoxy resin to secure the cpu in place. In the context of overheating and solder balls dilatation, that's not quite a good thing. Some sort of thermal spike must occur in order to break the contact between cpu and motherboard. Warning, if your phone will lock up and doesn't restart by itself, it's imperative that you disconnect the battery because as I measured, even with the phone locked, the CPU still overheats even more, thermal runaway occurs and temperature climbs to dangerous levels. I never left the phone do this for a long time, therefore I don't know how much it will still overheat, but it does and it will. In the initial stage of the problem, only extended heavy load use can trigger the problem. A common case is keeping the phone on in the car and using it for gps navigation in a hot summer. If the phone will restart before either 45 degrees at battery or 60-65 degrees at cpu level (however the last one is harder to measure) then you certainly have problems and they are just at the start.
3. problems get worse. At this stage it is possible to notice the 7 short vibrates at boot time if the phone is warm or kept in a warm environment. You don't have to push it very hard, it only needs to be warm. The vibration pattern is an error code made by the actual qualcomm chipset, not sent by either bootloader, spl or operating system. When in happens the cpu will lock itself up, however file transfer (including nand memory acces, storage card acces and basic operations) or other chipset functions will still work for some time. It appears only cpu processing is being halted. So if this occurs when you boot the phone, it will lock up, but if this occurs when you are flashing a rom, you might continue to see the progress bar still filling. The vibration pattern signals a physical damage to the qualcomm chipset has ocurred. There's no way around it, when it occur it will never just .. heal up by itself.
You will notice that the temperatures needed to induce a restart/lockup will decrease with time (both battery & cpu).
4. Problem at it's worse. CPU can lock itself even at 35-40 degrees (measured at it's level). Ambient temperature of only 10-12-15 degrees is enought to have the phone experience problems. The cpu start to suddenly produce either lock-outs or hard faults or simply work intermittently. The OS may give errors relating ARM CORE failure or fatal errors regarding execution of certain "lines" (related to code lines in the os core programming). At this stage, the phone doesn't need to feel warm in your hands to produce these problems. This could trick some people not to still relate this to thermal problems and look for the solution or problem cause elsewhere. It's still related... but at it's worse.
5. Total CPU collapse. If the phone locks and remains locked in whatever screen or program it was running, like i've said before, it will still overheat. If a stage 4 phone is left overheating, chances are that more balls connecting the chipset to the motherboard will fail. If any one needed to correctly initialise the chip or to power it on, fails - then it's end game for that phone. It will simply stop working and never turn on. Some other variants are that the phone will only start if placed in a freezer or start but never complete a boot sequence (either os or bootloader .. or both could be unable to start)

facdemol said:
as i found out until now the steps from a good working hd2 to this problems are something like this:
1. phone working ok. mainboard (lower part of the device) heats in some conditions - demanding programs etc battery can reach about 40-45 degrees max. without problems. The phone will restart or freeze (cpu halt) in any of these situations :
- battery temp exceeds 45 degrees and stays over this value for at least 5-10 minutes in order to trigger the thermistor used to measure the temperature in this area over i2c. at this time, it will prevent further charging and restart or lock the phone. This is normal behavior.
-CPU exceeds 60-65 degrees (exact value still to be determined. i'm trying to get acces to some similar chipset datasheets). This produces CPU halt. Depending on what you're doing, the halt will either reset the phone or simply lock it up. Restarting by soft reset or by itself will probably return the user back in the home screen with the phone still working. This is also normal behavior, related to qualcomm chip.
2. phone starts to malfunction. This condition starts by either large variation in temperature - mainboard al low temperature gets fast to full load or simply sustained full load. All HTC HD2's revisions have the same type of soldering in the cpu area. Visually speaking (no conclusive data yet) first revision used a bit more epoxy resin to secure the cpu in place. In the context of overheating and solder balls dilatation, that's not quite a good thing. Some sort of thermal spike must occur in order to break the contact between cpu and motherboard. Warning, if your phone will lock up and doesn't restart by itself, it's imperative that you disconnect the battery because as I measured, even with the phone locked, the CPU still overheats even more, thermal runaway occurs and temperature climbs to dangerous levels. I never left the phone do this for a long time, therefore I don't know how much it will still overheat, but it does and it will. In the initial stage of the problem, only extended heavy load use can trigger the problem. A common case is keeping the phone on in the car and using it for gps navigation in a hot summer. If the phone will restart before either 45 degrees at battery or 60-65 degrees at cpu level (however the last one is harder to measure) then you certainly have problems and they are just at the start.
3. problems get worse. At this stage it is possible to notice the 7 short vibrates at boot time if the phone is warm or kept in a warm environment. You don't have to push it very hard, it only needs to be warm. The vibration pattern is an error code made by the actual qualcomm chipset, not sent by either bootloader, spl or operating system. When in happens the cpu will lock itself up, however file transfer (including nand memory acces, storage card acces and basic operations) or other chipset functions will still work for some time. It appears only cpu processing is being halted. So if this occurs when you boot the phone, it will lock up, but if this occurs when you are flashing a rom, you might continue to see the progress bar still filling. The vibration pattern signals a physical damage to the qualcomm chipset has ocurred. There's no way around it, when it occur it will never just .. heal up by itself.
You will notice that the temperatures needed to induce a restart/lockup will decrease with time (both battery & cpu).
4. Problem at it's worse. CPU can lock itself even at 35-40 degrees (measured at it's level). Ambient temperature of only 10-12-15 degrees is enought to have the phone experience problems. The cpu start to suddenly produce either lock-outs or hard faults or simply work intermittently. The OS may give errors relating ARM CORE failure or fatal errors regarding execution of certain "lines" (related to code lines in the os core programming). At this stage, the phone doesn't need to feel warm in your hands to produce these problems. This could trick some people not to still relate this to thermal problems and look for the solution or problem cause elsewhere. It's still related... but at it's worse.
5. Total CPU collapse. If the phone locks and remains locked in whatever screen or program it was running, like i've said before, it will still overheat. If a stage 4 phone is left overheating, chances are that more balls connecting the chipset to the motherboard will fail. If any one needed to correctly initialise the chip or to power it on, fails - then it's end game for that phone. It will simply stop working and never turn on. Some other variants are that the phone will only start if placed in a freezer or start but never complete a boot sequence (either os or bootloader .. or both could be unable to start)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my phone stuck after it fall on the ground facing the LCD down on the tiles. there is no physical damage the screen is in perfect condition, touch screen works very well but after it hits on the tiles my phone is getting stuck randomly.. since its been a month after the incident i have tried a lot of ways to fix this even tried removing all the parts except the LCD and digitizer to see if there is something lose inside but still not fixed.. i m noob to all this dont really know names for all the parts. the reason i have found for this freeze is due to a little press near sim card where the main board is. even a very lite press from the back near sim card results the freeze..i can say this because it wont get stuck if didn't touch the mentioned area, every time when its stuck i have to remove battery cover and press the red button and it will get stuck again if i put the cover back after it boots (becouse when putting cover back it definitely press the area....so i have to be very careful to put it back) so can anyone help me on this? what could be the problem.. sorry for my english

An interesting observation. I have been in air conditioned room last 4 hrs and it really cools the hd2 down. Perhaps the glass digitizer is quite conducting and non-insulating.
During summer hot days I have hit 42C without any issues. Dont want to hit 45C though this hd2 is a beast.. Imagine staying at 1100MHz o/c all the time... aiiii caramba... we could cook some eggs on it.

Yeah, I've experienced some of the freeze while HD2 got hot and stayed like that until it cooled off. I've noticed that when I try to charge it in the car and run google map it tends not to fully charge as it should but it heats up after a while until it becomes unresponsive then i'd let it cool off again.
Hope it hasn't effected CPU's connections much but at this point I'll have to monitor its heat situation to prevent future disruptions.
Good work/thinking on the "cooling adapter" , i've seen similar approach on IBM's graphic card which fail due to the same reason and ppl would heat them up to reconnect chips connection to pcb.

the back of the lcd display (the actual lcd, not touchscreen) is made of metal and on top of it there is some copper foil. So.. yes, if you cool the screen it helps cools the cpu. However when i disassembled my hd2 i noticed that the actual cpu isn't in direct contact with the metallic back of the screen. So, although it could help if you cool the screen, it isn't very effective. I adapted my "cooling" pad to have the cpu thermally connected to the back of the screen via that DIY aluminium and copper foils setup.
@ modex if the phone drops, the bga connection between either the qualcomm chipset or nand memory (the 2 largest chips onboard) could get damaged. As we know the connection between the cpu (inside qualcomm chipset) and motherboard can be faulty or get that way over time, it's a prime suspect in your case. It is very difficult to predict the outcome if you send in the phone for repairs or have it reheated. I know of no service center that can effectively reball the cpu to the motherboad (means that the chip would actually have to be removed, connections remade - chip resoldered)
My phone is still doing well, one week after the intervention i made. About 14 roms installed, running wp7, android builds, custom wm 6.5, ubuntu and etc. Not a single restart or freeze. It does heat up, but it's now spread over it's surface.
From what i can tell, the diy heatsync helped more then the actual reheating of the chip via hot air station. If in the future, someone else without a warranty to the phone, would try making a similar hack to the phone, we will know for sure if the problem can be solved by simply cooling down the cpu to some extent.

When i will get back from my holiday i will try your thing on my hd2 as it does all the freaky parts even when doing nothing.
today i noticed 7vibrations and got scared, got artemis as a backup, using now, but after a week will try re-solder and give back feedback.
still-after few years of silence in doing electronics- i got my hermes back to life-white screen due to faulty front pcb keyboard, had tp2 and exchanged for hd2-want to see it fully working for the price i paid for it.
regards

Very cool thread...reminds me of days of palm pda when people were more technically
Inclined. Will have to try this out as well.

Just one silly question.
I mended pcb on hermes using heating torch(butane powered)
do you use the same sort of thing or special ones?

first of all heating up the qualcom chip is recomanded as a last resort option. however if you reheat it, pressing the chip to the board is VERRY dangerous, as it could permanently damage the BGA connection.
Here's some sort of guide on doing this. You will need a screwdriver, some 4-5 mica foil pads (you can get them from any electronic component store (get them for either TO3 or TO220 casing and cut them to the size of the cpu inside hd2) some good thermal grease (arctic silver or something for pc cpu's) an aluminum sheet for you to cut a piece of it.
* i don't recommend silicon thermal pads, use only mica crystal pads
* you can substitute the aluminum plate with aluminum/copper foil - the first is the one used for food wrapping)
* i don't recommend using anything beside a smd rework station (either hot air or infrared) to heat up the board. Although a heat gun can develop high temperatures, the air debit is to high (dangerous, you can blow up other components) and you will lack precise temperature control needed for this job.
1. Disassemble the phone following HTC's official videos. Completely remove the motherboard from the phone's casing.
2. Once you have the motherboard de-attached remove all metallic shields on both sides. Normally these prevent EM interferences from the outside to get in and mess with electric signals over the PCB. We can use them as part of the "cooling" system later.
3. OPTIONAL - efficiency yet to be determined/great risk involved - use either a special oven (not microwave !! it WILL kill the phone!) or a smd rework station to pre-heat the mainboard. Temperature must be set at around 95-110 degrees. Board must be heated from both sides, or at least one at a time, beginning with the one opposing the cpu side. Let it preheat at least 10 minutes.
3a. after preheating, use an aluminum foil to cover the rest of the components, anything other then the cpu itself then get to the actual heating, switching first to 250 degrees and directing the air stream on the cpu itself (using a larger nozzle for the tip of the heating gun). After 2-3 minutes of 250 degrees, swich to 340-360 degrees and heat the chip for another 5minutes. Move the heating gun around the surface of the chip and try to heat it evenly. If you have the guts and you are crazy enough use a knife with a larger blade and put the tip of the blade in the hot air stream in front of the cpu. Let it heat for a while, and also, continue heating the cpu. When the blade tip is hot enough press the chip with it , starting from the center and following each side. Apply even force on each press and try to have the blade as parallel with the chip possible. Don't press too hard, if you haven't kill the chip yet, that will kill it.
3b. let the board to cool down on it's own and during cooling try not to move it or do anything to it.
4. place a little amount of thermal grease on top of the cpu then place 1-2 mica foil pads (depending on thickness) over the cpu. Gently press the mica foil with one finger over the cpu. Now place more thermal grease over that mica foil and try to place the metalic shield over that area. If successfully done, the metallic shield should be in contact with the mica foil and the grease. Place back all shields on the main board.
5. On the phone's casing, measure the back of the display and try to cut an aluminum sheet of exactly the same size. If the sheet you can find is too thick - polish it and place it in a solution of either caustic soda or ferric chloride. This will get it thinner, but you have to supervise the process as if you leave it for long, the sheet could get completely dissolved. Check the sheet on short intervals (1min) to see the progress. Always use gloves and eye protection as both substances are dangerous (never mix them, use only one of them, the one you can get or already have). Once done, you will have a thin aluminum sheet that's flexible and about 1mm thick.
6. notice there are some ribbons connecting the display to the motherboard or other exposed metallic contacts. Before placing the aluminum sheet over the display's back, place some insulating tape over those metallic contacts to prevent any shortcircuit forming between them and the aluminum sheet. Next place the aluminum sheet over the display's back. Be careful not to damage any connector or ribbon in the process.
7. place more thermal grease on the cpu's metallic shield and check to see if the motherboard gets in good thermal contact with the aluminum sheet you just placed over the display's back. If there is still some space between them, use another mica foil and place thermal grease on both sides of it.
8. reassemble the phone, and make some tests to see if you get some improvements.
One more thing, this little project of our is in a "more to be seen/tested" state. As of now... only one device was fixed by this method - mine, it could have been simple luck. I don't know yet. more then a week later (strange weather also, + 20 degrees outside then last time i wrote the original post) the phone still works ok. Now running 1.3Ghz overclocked with NAND Android
@ januszgorlewski i remember the first time the phone was vibrating 7 times and i didn't know about this problem, i though it was an WM6.5 Energy Rom feature .

yep.. more than 2 weeks have passed and after i completed all possible tests the phone still works ok.
About 22-25 roms flashed (wp7, wm6.5, android, ubuntu) phone was used either normally or heated with a hair dryer. At about 30 degrees ambient room temperature, i run some 720p testing and manage to run sample videos until battery died out, then rerun the videos while charging (charging induces more heat also).
In all those 2 weeks i had only 2 restarts, both in wp7 (can't remember what rom version did that) and both occurring when i was setting up the phone after the phone update. Phone was cold however. I didn't manage to produce more restarts either when the phone heated up or i tried running intensive apps on it. Guess it was software related.
So.. i guess it's over with this problem.

This thread is awesome. I've opened my HD2 a few times in the past week to replace the LCD. Between the first time and opening it last night the LCM (LCD and touchscreen module) was slightly loose from the chassis so the screen was protruding a little and the front AP buttons were sunken. This was the case for a period of about a week, during which I noticed the phone would get very, very hot towards the bottom on the posterior surface, beneath the battery cover (around the area of the main board). Last night I properly assembled the whole device and it's now completely flush. The overheating doesn't seem to be occurring now.
I wasn't experiencing any restarts or lockups during the time it was overheating.
When I can get hold of the materials I'm definitely trying your heatsink. Thanks for sharing this.

Packaging Reliability - 7 vibration lock-ups
Thanks facdemol for your investigation and sharing.
I have been typing a lengthy description of what happend to me and then my browser hang - annoying so now only the short version
My long awaited factory fresh HD2 that failed exactly as described within 2 month at winter season. I was lucky get the original SPL back after storing it on the balcony at minus 5 and flashing from SD. Please mind, that for me the issue was heavily accelerated with the HD2 plugged in.
Yesterday I got mine back from warranty repair with the main board swapped. Since I am now anxious about this to happen again I asked about similar experience from others which has been denied. After reading this I recommend starting a petition, as this is obviously an wrong thermal design. I work as an packaging engineer and can access this as x-ray, ultrasound microscope (water bath only) and infrared imaging. Even though I dont have the time start this petition I would offer to help putting some serious reliability research behind.
So you could donate malicious hardware for inspection, as mine is still in warranty.
Few years back I had a good RMA experience with my Canon camera that died in warm humidity. After some research in the net I found the policy that all models will be replaced for exactly this failure -no matter when it occurs, as it was a design error (wrong material for CCD attach at this case).
So please people with thermally instable snapdragon devices STAND UP and ask HTC for seriously handling these mistakes. They should replace even after the warranty expiration if they only admit, it was their design flaw...
I for myself will probably try to stress my repiared HD2 in order to have this failure again and then I can opt for exchanging the device. Buth then, what device to buy? For the dual cores this might be even worse. Suppliers do not have long enough life cycles for their products to really do good redesign.
Keep it up

I had 7 vibrations while on the plane, just switched on, play solitaire 5min, then reset-7vibrations, took battery out, start it up, same 7vibrations, about five times same cycle.
Then i thought, ok I am done now-it's a brick, as PC's have BIOS which can tell you by beeping what the hell the problem is. In this case, no idea... Then i found this thread.
@ facdemol I might try only a heatsink - reheating cpu not needed, right? but i will wait for insurance exchange of my phone...

sir first of all i want to thank u for this excellent post . . . . Cn u tell some other easy material than mica foil pads which may b available .. I hav same prob with my hd2 with expired warranty .

the mica crystal pads should be available at any electronic components store. If you can't find any, you could try to substitute them with any other similar purpose material. Use only thermal pads used in electronics for semiconductor (transistors mostly) thermal dissipation. However from what i know or can test, the mica ones are superior to other designs or materials.
Also, good quality thermal paste is a MUST. Cheap one tend to dry out or loose effectiveness over time.
@ profahmad - yes, the back of the lcd unit is metallic. Normally it was not intended to provide heat dissipation, neither is in direct contact with the heat making components, but it takes some of the heat and spreads it over it's surface. What i did is to forcefully use this piece of metal along with the materials i used for the "heat sync" in order to facilitate better thermal dissipation. The HD2 is build on the "edge" as you can see, even if the display unit is removed or improperly mounted, the small effect in cooling the board it once had is enough now to provoke some of the thermal issues.
@januszgorlewski reheating is very risky without solid previous experience. Simply reheating the cpu didn't solve the problem for me, it only ameliorated it a bit. The new heat sync did the trick so i suspect you can skip reheating with not much of a loss in effectiveness. However i should have experienced with more devices in order to know for sure the effects of each stage of my experiment.
@sqeeza yes, a petition could be filed out. However, there are 20-30 topics in this area about hd2 freezing or restarting but most people don't know there is a thermal problem related with these events. If we advertise the problem and it's cause to these people they could run some simple test to determine if their phones are also suffering from this problem.

[FIX] Nexus 7 ( 2013 ) grounding issue & improve Touchscreen performance

Warning: These MODs will void your warranty. You will have to open the device and leave traces behind by performing them. Only perform these Mods on your own risk, if your tablet turns into a brick after or tries to conquer the world, it is not my fault !
As many people know, the Nexus 7 ( 2013 ) has some serious issues. Some devices might show next to no problems at all while others are barely usable.
The Mods I´ve come up with help to at least make the tablet usable again since the manufacturer saved too much $$$ for these devices.
Improving the Touchscreen performance and fixing the grounding issue:
The Touchscreen controler is way too sensitive and the connector cable leading to the Touchscreen acts like a antenna. In order to suppress interferences, it requires a shielding.
I know that some people try to flash other Firmware in order to improve the response but this is not how you can get rid of the problem permanently. These extra Touchscreen Firmwares might decrease the sensitivity and make the Touchscreen usable, not more or less.
Material needed:
- Some Aluminum Foil
- Some adhesive Tape
- Some thick piece of paper ( optional )
- a multimeter device ( optional )
- conductive pads ( optional )
Basically you need to disconnect the Touchscreen connector, attach some thick piece of paper between the cable and the battery ( only optional since this method only adds some extra insulation and insures a even tighter fit of the cable ), attach some Aluminum Foil ( make sure to fold it many times since you need many layers to make it stable ), wrap it around the cable and fix it with stripes of adhesive tape.
This is how your new cable could look like. The open copper spots on the Touchscreen cable are connected to ground; by attaching the aluminum foil, it will also have a connection to ground and shield the cable against interferences. You can check the proper connection with a multimeter if you´re not sure if you have a tight connection.
I also attached a extra conductive pad on top of the connector to ensure a even tighter electrical connection.
I salvaged these conductive pads from junk devices
After having performed this Mod, I never ever had any trouble with my Touchscreen controler going ape-sh*t after a while or not reacting when the tablet was laying on my table and only being touched with one hand only ( also known to other people as the "grounding issue" where you need to touch your Tablet with both hands ).
Audio buzzing issue:
My device also had another issue where I could hear a buzzing noise while using the headphone jack without playing any sounds at all. I could only fix this ground connection issue by bypassing it with a extra trace of conductive ink.
Material needed:
- conductive silver ink
- conductive pads
- adhesive tape ( optional )
This is what I did:
You will need a multimeter to check if the connections are ok and also attach some extra conducting pads.
Safety first:
If you´re too scared about risking a short circuit, you can attach some adhesive tape :
My device is working without any flaws now and I can finally enjoy it like I wanted it to behave when I bought it in 2013..
Happy Modding,

I also wanted to mention that the grounding error when using the headphone output, without listening to music for a while, seems to have vanished too.
I used to have a buzzing noise when not playing any sounds at all, after a while. Maybe the parallel ground connection prevents some internal interruptions, messed by a faulty PCB design.

edit: removed

Very cool. I'll give this a try over the weekend; I'll have to get that silver pen first. They cost a pretty penny here in Singapore.

edit: removed this one too

Sweet. I'm doing this asap. I absolutely love my Nexus 7 but the touchscreen just drives me crazy. Terraria is my favorite game and controls are just insane. I get multiple inputs often. Character is running all over the place, turned the wrong way. I tried to play a FPS a few days ago and that was a complete joke. I've done the touchscreen firmware flashes and reseating the cable connections and both help alot but still doesn't stop the frequent spaz fits.
So you did both steps; added silver trace to the backplate and wrapped the cable in foil...?
I'm assuming the silver trace didn't work since you continued working on it. Do you recommend doing the silver trace or just the foil wrap?
A video would be interesting to just show what connects to what. Video is also easier to make out what is what.

edit: removed this one too. It seems that there is not any demand for mods like this.

Just wanted to report that I placed a 2×3 strip of twice folded tinfoil underneath the two cables running down the back inside my nexus. I made sure the left and right edges of the foil were touching the metal bracket before I put the back cover back on. My issues with a dead screen have disappeared. It had been happening more and more over the past 2 months, maybe 10-12 times a day. I was close to getting a new device. Glad I didn't!

Gorgtech said:
Edit: removed due to low demand
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But why? Should sharing something be in a racing with other threads? Helping even one person should be good enough.
Sent from my D6503 using XDA Free mobile app

I´m glad the shielding did the trick for you
I removed the posts because the Mods require you to not only open the device ( which is easy and can be done without leaving any traces if done the proper way ) but also perform changes which will leave marks behind and void your warranty for sure. If you are a older user who owns the device for 1-2 years ( and doesn´t care about voiding the warranty ), you might want to try them.
But I guess that most people here might be afraid in the end to modify the device like I did. XDA is a platform for software enthusiasts and I´m not sure if hardware-mods really fit here.
But if there really is a demand for fix which require you to do more than just eg. playing with ADB around and flashing other Touchscreen Firmware or simply open the device and pushing a connector ( while wearing gloves so you cannot leave any finger prints on the copper foils ), I can reupload a short description

Gorgtech said:
I´m glad the shielding did the trick for you
I removed the posts because the Mods require you to not only open the device ( which is easy and can be done without leaving any traces if done the proper way ) but also perform changes which will leave marks behind and void your warranty for sure. If you are a older user who owns the device for 1-2 years ( and doesn´t care about voiding the warranty ), you might want to try them.
But I guess that most people here might be afraid in the end to modify the device like I did. XDA is a platform for software enthusiasts and I´m not sure if hardware-mods really fit here.
But if there really is a demand for fix which require you to do more than just eg. playing with ADB around and flashing other Touchscreen Firmware or simply open the device and pushing a connector ( while wearing gloves so you cannot leave any finger prints on the copper foils ), I can reupload a short description
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, a mod is a mod. Does not matter if software or hardware. A simple warning for warranty risks should be enough. It's not any more dangerous than installing Cyanogenmod or achieving S-off on HTC devices or bacing up DRM keys of our Sony, yet their inventors think giving you the warning on the OP is enough.
For the same angle, it's l logical that you advise people to use gloves, etc.. to hide any evidence of interacting with the device's inside so the warranty remains..
Besides, same rule as rooting still applies; if one is afraid or not know what to do clearly, then one should not do it.
People, like me, who lives in countries where the warranty is not honored properly because most of the tech companies has no honor at all, most likely would prefer a self-made solution rather than trusting the warranty companies -which is not the device maker company but a local one- and waiting for weeks.
Sent from my D6503 using XDA Free mobile app

Was gonna about to check this out again and try it, but you removed it already Hope you will post the shorter guide.

Please upload the guide again
Skickat från min HTC One_M8

Why would you delete your posts?

please re upload the fix

I'm very interested in seeing the guide
I just found this today, so I haven't had a chance to see it yet, but the context from the later posts makes it sound very interesting

Gorgtech said:
Edit: removed due to low demand
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
but why remove it?

where is fix?

Low demand? What kind reason is that?

can you post a picture? thanks.

Seem to have fixed my screen issues.... by playing Mario Kart

My S7 (G930F) has had screen issues that are fairly typical to the model. When it gets a bit cold, the bottom three quarters of the screen go dim, then pink streaks start to appear from the bottom as it gets worse.
This can be be fixed to a certain extent by disabling auto-brightness, then turning the brightness down until the screen looks normal again. Once the brightness is even across the whole screen, it can be turned back up again a little. Sometimes rebooting it helps.
It's been happening very regularly, and it's been so bad that if I'm outdoors in daylight, I need to turn the brightness down to the point where it's hard to see the screen. Even at a comfortable room temperature, it's likely to happen if the brightness is up high. The screen is usually going weird in the morning too, when I first pick it up, until it warms up a little.
As I understand it, it's caused by a bad solder joint somewhere on the screen assembly. It gets cold, the solder contracts a little, enough to cause a bad connection.
Anyway, last weekend I was playing Mario Kart Tour online for quite a while, to the point where the phone was really warm in my hands. Now, ever since, I've not had any screen problems at all. I've had auto-brightness turned on the whole time, it's definitely been exposed to low temperatures, down to maybe 5 Celsius. It was cold to the touch this morning, and it was fine. All the conditions where it would usually happen, the screen has been fine, all week, even with the brightness slider all the way up full for extended periods.
I'm guessing what's happened is similar to the crude but effective trick of fixing a faulty PlayStation 3 by putting the motherboard in the oven for a while, or blasting it with a heat gun, except in this case I've baked the phone from the inside.
A relatively graphically demanding game, played online, constantly processing touch and gyroscope input, means that everything that can get hot has got hot. GPU, CPU, radio. The copper heat dissipation pipe inside has spread the heat across the back of the screen assembly, et voila, the bad solder joint has been cooked just enough to make a better connection.
I guess that like baking a PS3 motherboard, it will ultimately be a temporary fix, but it will be interesting to see how long it works for, and if it will work again if the problems start again.

No. You didn't fix anything, you just avoided the problem temporarily. This also happened on my Galaxy S7 and it is due to a partial disconnection of the display flex. Over time, due to thermal expansion and compression the flex' contact becomes loose. When it becomes loose, it disconnects partially when the device cools down because the display and the motherboard contract and get away from each other increasing the distance between the display and the motherboard. If you keep your device hot at all times it will have a reduced lifespan. Don't.
Indeed, you repositioned your flex by heating your phone because it is loose and it sits just right, but at any moment it can come off again.
There is only one permanent fix. You need to take your back panel off and let the device cool to room temperature (important!)
After that, disconnect the display flex completely and then plug it again and push it just tight enough to make a firm contact. Your display should work perfectly now no matter the temperature.
Note that this will remove your IP68 water resistance, but you shouldn't get your phone near water anyways.

My phone has been opened up, all the connectors carefully cleaned with isopropyl alcohol, then firmly pushed back into place.
in fact my phone is made from spare parts. the screen was leftover from a friend's S7, after i replaced their screen for them. they had already had it fixed once while it was under warranty, and the screen problems ultimately started again.
i kept hold of the screen and paired it with a mainboard i had left over from another S7. i wanted to establish if the problem really was the screen assembly, if it was just bad connections, and if it still behaved in the same way with another mainboard.
the problem, in this case, is most definitely the screen assembly. it has displayed exactly the same problems with two different mainboards, after both myself and the warranty repair service had worked on it.
also, if you read what i said properly, you'll see i'm definitely not suggesting keeping it hot all the time as a solution. i'm saying that it got really hot ONCE, for maybe 40 minutes or so, and ever since, it's worked perfectly for the longest period of time i've ever known it to go for without the display going weird. it's been down to 5°c or maybe lower since, i live in rural wales, and it's autumn.

If you read what I said properly, you should know that what you did is just a workaround to keep the connector in the correct position temporarily moving it with thermal expansion, you definitely didn't reflow anything because RoHS solder only starts to soften at near 160°C, far beyond what the Exynos TMU will let anything in the board heat up before tripping and shutting the entire motherboard down.
If the problem persists then try putting a small piece of rolled electrical tape above the display connector to make some extra pressure against the board.

yeah "read what i said again properly" was an unnecessarily dickish choice of words on my part. i attribute that to replying before finishing my coffee
so would you say from experience that the issue where the bottom half/three quarters of the screen goes dull is pretty much always down to the display connector, and a little extra pressure holding it in place will stop it happening again? i have read conflicting reports, with a few attributing it to a bad solder joint in the screen assembly.
i'm not too worried about opening the phone up again, once the original adhesive has been removed and replaced with the third party pre-cut stuff, it's a bit easier to open it up again.

Mr Creosote said:
yeah "read what i said again properly" was an unnecessarily dickish choice of words on my part. i attribute that to replying before finishing my coffee
so would you say from experience that the issue where the bottom half/three quarters of the screen goes dull is pretty much always down to the display connector, and a little extra pressure holding it in place will stop it happening again? i have read conflicting reports, with a few attributing it to a bad solder joint in the screen assembly.
i'm not too worried about opening the phone up again, once the original adhesive has been removed and replaced with the third party pre-cut stuff, it's a bit easier to open it up again.
Click to expand...
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Okay, no problem
We all get grumpy without our morning coffee, especially after fixing tens of AOSP build errors and having to restart our 7-hour build.
I had the exact same problem you had, the three bottom quarters of the display blacked out. I am pretty sure it is caused by a weak contact because, from observation alone the phone:
1. the connection restored itself when the phone became hot
2. after cooling down for a while, the display started to fail again
3. by artificially applying a CPU load, the phone heated and the display connector fell back into place connecting the bottom of the display and giving image.
4. the display NEVER flickered when it felt hot to my hands
Also, you mentioned that you exposed your phone to low temperatures so that might cause a cumulative effect over time on a loose display connector, I think they come kinda loose out of the factory or get loose after a few years. I myself opened up my phone with a hair dryer and a few guitar picks, it was hard and I ruined a student credential card but eventually I cooled down the phone so when I remade the contact it would keep itself together on a cold device. Then I detached the connector and voila, it came back to life and confirmed my observation. As a result, I got a free S7 for myself to upgrade from my Huawei P9. The display hasn't failed for me since.
On a second thought, you should probably avoid the electrical tape and use something that will resist higher temperatures without melting or being conductive. Or just avoid a shim altogether. I didn;t need one.
You are pretty much returning the connection to its factory state, keeping it nice and tight for more time.
Good luck, it was quite the learning experience for me and my first time repairing a phone.

I've got some adhesive foam pads that are meant for use inside electronics, I will cut one of those down to size and give it a try if my screen problems reappear.

After a couple of weeks, the screen problems started to reappear. They've never got as bad as they were before, i haven't had to turn the screen brightness down to the point where it was hard to see, but it has been getting worse and more regular. I've just taken the back off my phone, disconnected the screen connector and pushed it firmly back into place, and added a layer of adhesive foam to it. all seems fine at the moment, i will see how it gets on out on a walk in daylight with auto-brightness on.