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Hello Atrix owners,
(jump to "The ideas" if you dont want to hear my story! )
Got my Atrix at&t last friday, still tweaking it to my likings, but when I started playing Apparatus, emulators, AirAttackHD, and other games to test the power of the TEGRA chip, I felt the phone becoming warmer and warmer.
EDIT: Played 1 lap on Riptide, went to check on the processor temp: 61 degrees celsius.
I opened the back case. The bottom area, specially above the microSD card, was very hot (based on motorola defy's temps, my previous android phone)
The battery itself wasn't even warm, except for the region near the bottom left.
I was scared I had gotten a defective unit, so I came to xda forums, and most of the topics related to temps came to the same conclusion: that was the normal operating temps under load from the dual core processor.
Still, it worries me because of the position in which they've placed the microSD port. My card's max. operating temps are 60 celsius, and my processor was doing 52 within 5-10 minutes of gaming.
Also, I'm a little obsessed with computer components getting too hot. I've seen lots of motherboards leaving this world because of that.
The ideas:
Since I had recently bought a ICDiamond thermal paste, I started thinking about modding the atrix's case to dissipate more heat, someway.
This page shows a teardown of our phone: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Motorola-Atrix-4G-Teardown/4964/2
You can see in the board's pictures that the NVIDIA CPU/GPU chip along with the 1gb memory its exactly above the microSD slot - marked in yellow in STEP 10
I was thinking about removing the metal plate covering the chip itself, apply some thermal paste there that would transfer heat to the metal plate. (see picture)
Then, above the metal plate, on the plastic cover shown in this picture, maybe put a small copper sheet (or other heat conducting material) on the inside, to spread the heat to a larger area.
Maybe drill some holes on the plastic cover to expose this metal to the area just under back cover.
One concern (also shown in the picture and in the website) is the magnetic compass, marked blue on the attached pic. Would the metal sheet cause any kind of interference? I could use some help on this from someone with more knowledge on magnetic physics and eletronic compasses.
I haven't done any sorts of thermal modding on computers, graphics cards, etc., so I would like some help, insights, and improves on my initial ideas, so we can have cooler dual core smartphones
Nice post! I'm curious to see some reviews after some other brave souls try this... In theory it should help. As for the magnetic compass.... maybe try using aluminum foil... non magnetic, and will dissipate some heat... probably not as much as the copper, but hey....
This mod would be spreading out the heat from the CPU to about an inch away, but still in the phone, so what's the plan after that? Even without this mod, after maybe 10 minutes the bottom half of the phone is nice and warm under CPU-stressful activities anyway, there doesn't seem to be much need for more heat spreading ability... The heat spreads out fine, the real problem is getting heat away from the phone itself, not from the CPU.
Nice concept.
Drilling some small holes in the cover could help heat get out, but without active cooling, I doubt much will dissipate through there. If you were to drill holes, I would do them on a small CNC mill if you have one available so you get a nice even hole pattern, and minimize a drill wandering and butchering the cover. You could also cut a small piece out of the cover, then put some wire mesh like the speaker cover over it to get more air in/out.
You will be fine using metal sheeting if you do not use anything magnetic. But then the materials available will probably not conduct heat very well.
In all reality, as I previously said, without any kind of active cooling, you may pull a few degrees of heat away from the CPU/GPU, but then it has nowhere to go from there, so I doubt you will gain much.
Only one way to find out for sure though!
Hello WolfFX, my fellow atrix owner,
Nice idea indeed. I would probably prefer to stick a very thin layer of copper on top of the current one and apply the paste between the two copper. If the results seem to better than stock, i would use correct sandpaper to create more space in the housing, so i could put a thicker copper plate. Thicker copper means better heat spreading and cooling.
I had 2 defy's myself. The reason for the defy spreading heat better cause its internal design isn't as complicated as atrix plus its thicker. Generally, the singlecore cpu's can also get very hot if they're used in a thin housing IMO.
I use some on the base of a small fan that hooks up to my micro usb port for active. If you've read this far I am kidding and its not possible because the usb port is not.powered.
On another not cutting out approximately 1-1.5 square inches in lower part of the back cover and replacing with copper might help. Cutting out a hole/holes in the back of tpu case would help hold copper plate and let heat dissipate. It would be ghetto fabulous but the question is would it dissipate enough heat to make it worth the trouble.
I voided my warranty and your mum.
Dual core machines have to work harder in an environment designed for single core like Android. If the app you are running is optimised for dual core it should run cooler. ICS will be multi-core optimised. Dual core naturally run hotter than single.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
dragon_76 said:
Dual core machines have to work harder in an environment designed for single core like Android. If the app you are running is optimised for dual core it should run cooler. ICS will be multi-core optimised. Dual core naturally run hotter than single.
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kinda funny that the idiots on Engaget constantly crave for quad-core, when we are struggling as it is on dual-core technology with single core FW...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
palmboy5 said:
This mod would be spreading out the heat from the CPU to about an inch away, but still in the phone, so what's the plan after that? Even without this mod, after maybe 10 minutes the bottom half of the phone is nice and warm under CPU-stressful activities anyway, there doesn't seem to be much need for more heat spreading ability... The heat spreads out fine, the real problem is getting heat away from the phone itself, not from the CPU.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tought about that, and you are right, it will still be warm.
But if the copper works, the processor temperature readings will be lower, while the warmth will have more area to be dissipated.
It will still be passive, but better than the actual state.
Does anybody have knowledge about motorola's warranty on the Atrix?
Supposing I would open the phone to put the copper and thermal paste, (but dont drill the case, that would be irreversible), would that void any warranty stickers or something like that?
I got my phone last friday, haven't unlocked bootloader or anything because I'd like to keep my warranty for a while...
ccrows said:
Kinda funny that the idiots on Engaget constantly crave for quad-core, when we are struggling as it is on dual-core technology with single core FW...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If people were satisfied with what exists, there would be no innovation.
Not saying increasing core count is innovative, but its far better than being stagnant nonetheless.
WolfFX said:
I tought about that, and you are right, it will still be warm.
But if the copper works, the processor temperature readings will be lower, while the warmth will have more area to be dissipated.
It will still be passive, but better than the actual state.
Does anybody have knowledge about motorola's warranty on the Atrix?
Supposing I would open the phone to put the copper and thermal paste, (but dont drill the case, that would be irreversible), would that void any warranty stickers or something like that?
I got my phone last friday, haven't unlocked bootloader or anything because I'd like to keep my warranty for a while...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what do you think? would you want to honor a warranty after making hardware changes like that? if you really want to try, buy a phone off craigslist with a broken screen or something and do the mod and see what happens.
pukemon said:
what do you think? would you want to honor a warranty after making hardware changes like that? if you really want to try, buy a phone off craigslist with a broken screen or something and do the mod and see what happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If someday I move from Brazil to United States I can think about your suggestions.
The damn taxes on my country make the carrier free phone cost equivalent to 1250 dollars.
The broken screen phone here probably will cost the same as a new one on US...
Whatever, soon I will lose my extreme-obsessive-care-for-new-gadget and unlock the bootloader, void the warranty, and test this mod.
If anyone has the courage to do it, please take some pics and post them here, along with comments
If you ever do it, I suggest slotting/drilling the back cover first and seeing what gains you.
I voided my warranty and your mum.
palmboy5 said:
If people were satisfied with what exists, there would be no innovation.
Not saying increasing core count is innovative, but its far better than being stagnant nonetheless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand the need to innovate but...
IMO we are not at the point with CPUs where we can "comfortably" put 4 cores on phones yet.
Can it be done? yes, but it would be dumb to do IMHO. We need smaller transistors on chips, an OS that can handle multi-core, and devs that can write Apps properly for that.
Otherwise you're wasting money on an oven that happens to make calls...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
pukemon said:
If you ever do it, I suggest slotting/drilling the back cover first and seeing what gains you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By back cover you mean the one with torx screws, or the outer one?
To do it on the external cover I would need some fine tools, since any mistakes would screw even more the visual appeal of the phone
I saw on another topic here on the forums where someone was asking if there was something such as a metal back cover. That could help on the heat issue. But all the answers were negative. The flexibility of the plastic seems to be what allows it to be opened in the first place
ccrows said:
I understand the need to innovate but...
IMO we are not at the point with CPUs where we can "comfortably" put 4 cores on phones yet.
Can it be done? yes, but it would be dumb to do IMHO. We need smaller transistors on chips, an OS that can handle multi-core, and devs that can write Apps properly for that.
Otherwise you're wasting money on an oven that happens to make calls...
Sent from my MB860 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That and the fact you would need a much larger battery to make it a day, or stay with the thin is in but haved a wired cell phone because you wont go anywhere for long with a dead cell phone.
I voided my warranty and your mum.
like CaelanT said, without active cooling (read: a fan), there really will not be much benefit. the entire casing is made of plastic so even if heat were to be dissipated under that area, it would still be trapped there.
dLo GSR said:
like CaelanT said, without active cooling (read: a fan), there really will not be much benefit. the entire casing is made of plastic so even if heat were to be dissipated under that area, it would still be trapped there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wont dissipate too much, but the fact that we can feel the warmth outside means heat is coming through. I'll wait my tests week to be over so I can buy some tools and still need to find out where to buy the copper or aluminum sheet.
WolfFX said:
Wont dissipate too much, but the fact that we can feel the warmth outside means heat is coming through. I'll wait my tests week to be over so I can buy some tools and still need to find out where to buy the copper or aluminum sheet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
heat is coming through but it has nothing to remove it. we can heat sink it to another part of the phone but without a HUGE piece of heat conductive metal to take it, it will simply stay hot. there is no fan/active element to remove the heat from the device and so we are stuck with how it is. that's the problem with microelectronics and ICs that don't allow for fans, and it's up to the software and its use of the CPU to minimize the load on the processors.
i know the effort is valiant but i honestly, from an EE standpoint, don't see you getting much noticeable difference without cramping something else up (i.e. messing with reception because of rogue metal plates or transferring that heat to other parts / ICs of the phone which are not as heat resistant)
yes im sure this definetly voids warrenty (fyi lol i voided mine )
unlocked bootloader att. atrix. honeycomb rom. faux oc kernal
Hi all,
I have recently been repairing iphones and while doing this I have notice something in their construction that I thought we should have. Both the iphone 3 and 4 have a mylar mirror coating on the rear of the LCD to reflect heat away from the lcd and touchscreen, and it really works well. If you have an Iphone check it out, even when the cpu is flying the back gets hot but the screen stays cool. This got me thinking about the vega and how hot it gets running roms like VegaICS and Vegacomb. This can make touchscreens wig out and is uncomfortable. The design is flawed. There is a Mylar sheet in the vega but its completly in the wrong place. It is in the right place to be an RF sheild (thats probably what its for) but for cooling its about as much use as a 3 bar fire. When I am using my vega (playing games) it gets so hot inside that I can feel the heat flowing out of the hole for the dock connector. If I lay back, with the bottom of the vega resting on my stomach and I have a tee shirt on it gets hot enough to become uncomfortable so I have to move it. The Mylar sheet stuck to the back of the vega is reflecting heat back at the motherboard LCD and touchscreen like a little oven. The only place for the heat to escape is through the LCD, touchscreen and the other small gaps and holes around the vega. The metal panel bettween the LCD and motherboard will slow down the heating of the touchscreen but not much and will probably just be trapping heat when it gets up to temperature.
So to cool down the vega.
This is really simple. I ordered a small sheet of dimple mylar off eBay (non-conductive and disapates heat better than normal mylar preventing heat spots. apparently. I have put it under the motherboard and on the back of the LCD. I also removed the mylar from the back of the rear panel. For good measure I cut a pieces of aluminum off a PC heat sink and fixed them to the Tegra chip and the ram chips (with alaska sheet type heat sink stuff, that's a technical term ). The heat sinks are probably overkill but it cant hurt and may meen overclocking will be cooler and therfore more stable.
I tested it with and without the heat sinks and the overall temperature is significantly cooler on both. The screen now stays cool all the time, even when charging and using the cpu hard. The back still gets warm but no where near as hot as before. With the Addition of the heat sinks didn't noticably reduce the temperature but they will come into play when ICS gets overclocked.
A nice side effect is the charger no longer causes the touchscreen to freak out (altough this could be eduardo's new driver). Fine accuracy is reduced while plugged in but the screen no longer double/phantom clicks and is usable for everything but drawing.
Overall I am really happy with the mod. It's cheap and easy to do and cools the vega a lot. Next time I have the back off I may add another peice near the charge jack to try to completly remove the charge/accuracy problem. I have not noticed any problems with interferance caused by removing the mylar off the inside of the back panel although my neibours telly could be going haywire without me knowing (not my problem).
Heres some pictures of what I did.
The back of the LCD covered with mylar (hard to get a good picure because of the reflection.
The metal panel back in with more mylar where the battery and motherboard are mounted, holes cut in mylar for the motherboard mounting screws.
Everything back in except the battery.
This show the original mylar sheet and where it was inside the back panel. Now removed and binned.
The heat sinks
Running as cool as a cucumber B)
Amazing work, i have a Ployer Momo9, well it's more like a clone of that tablet, when i updated it to ICS it went ok, but sometimes i had random crashes, i used to have a small flat heatsink from an old motherboard wich still had the self-adhesive; so one day i finally gutted up and cracked open the tablet, placed the heatsink and had to say that now it doesn't crash.
I started googling to see if some1 had done the same with other tablet, i found your post and now i guess ill try the same with the mylar, wich can't find by the way, i have some aluminum sheet but i guess it's a bad idea to put some conductor as a heatshield
@richardmlea
awesome work
I've seen a couple of threads in the past where people have asked about creating heatsinks for improving the cooling efficiency of their devices. Under normal circumstances a heatsink wouldn't be necessary, but recently with Clemsyn and other kernel devs starting to push the physical limits of the Tegra 3, heat dissipation becomes a major concern at 1.8Ghz and higher. I'm starting to wonder if there might be a way to get creative with some copper foil and a few old laptop heatsinks I've got lying around, just to give the chips a bit of relief from all of the mean and terrible things I do to them. But having never taken my Nexus apart, I have no idea what kind of room is available for heat pipes or foil.
Anybody ever tried making a heatsink for a tablet or phone? This isn't meant to be wholly a serious discussion, and I fully expect to get a lot of flack about battery usage and melting plastic. I just think it would be cool to mod the device into being able to maintain these ridiculous clock speeds and not have it burn my hands.
using the clemsyn 2ghz kernel in front of the a/c works out well
There's very little empty space inside the Nexus 7, so there's no chance of adding additional cooling without more major modding.
I've been looking in to exactly this. I find my Tegra 3 gets to 60 C even before overclocking. If you study the teardown photos you can get an idea of how it might work. I turns out the main SoC chip's headspreader is nicely accessible.
The back pops off the Nexus 7 so easily we can easily take a peak.
My first idea would be to put a little thermal paste in each layer on the SoC's heat spreader, this is covered by a copper RF shield/heat spreader on the chip, and another copper layer on the back cover. Just a tiny dab would do, and it will be smooshed out over an area when the cover goes on. Could get a bit messy though.
There's exactly zero room to work with, it's all very tightly packed and a nicely engineered tablet.
But the back cover is so replaceable you could cut in to it.
If I was going to do it myself I would cut through all layers and have a heatsink directly on the tegra's heatspreader with an adhesive thermal pad. Any more than about something like 1-2mm and it would not be flush with the rear cover.
Alternately some perforation in the plastic on the rear around the area may help.
If i can scrounge some replacement parts I might have a crack at doing stuff.
Whoa whoa whoa, 2GHZ?
BRB !!
Mungulz said:
Whoa whoa whoa, 2GHZ?
BRB !!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, for those people who want to fry their Nexus 7s.
I've only OC'd to 1.4 GHz..not so sure I'll go much farther than that.
This is the way I fixed the wifi\bluetooth error with continuous rebooting on my Atrix.
I did not come up with it, and I do not guarantee it will work in your device, I'm simply sharing this because it's information that's hard to find and understand. I fixed my device in this way, so have others. I do not take responsability for any damage you might make to your device attempting this fix, and I do not claim it will work forever - it's been two days for me and still great!
For completeness sake, if you guys want to check other proposed fixes and some reasons why they might or might not work, here is this great post by mvniekerk, a person more far more knowlegble then me when it comes to these technological issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071
I'd also like to thank John-aurelio, junior member, who initially posted about this fix here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071&page=4
All credit goes to him!
So, what did I do?
1) I cut out two rectagular pieces of plastic from a pill tin, glued them on top of each other with scotch tape. I think any thin piece of plastic should do.
2) Opened up my Atrix by removing screws with a T5 Torx screwdriver. If you don't know how to do this check out this teardown by ifixit: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Motorola+Atrix+4G+Teardown/4964/1
3) Slightly raised the motherboard and placed the plastic rectangle under it, with a little bit sticking out into the battery compartment.
To my amazement it worked, it is still working.
I wanted to tell you guys why, but I don't know. Perhaps one of you guys wants to experiment applying pressure to each component separately to find out the culprit?
Also, I'm curious to know if this will work for all of you, or just some of you.
Here are the pics:
This last one is the piece of tin\plastic with tape, side by side with a pencil for scale. Its not the tin I used, but its basically the same, but the one I used has white paint, I don't know if should make a difference. If you're worried about shorts just cover the whole thing in tape or cut plastic from a bottle or something.
The first two are how its supposed to look in the end.
[EDIT]: Here are some more pics:
This is the piece of plastic I used. It doesn't show, but it is very thin, one milimiter thick, if even.
These are of the open device. In the last one the plastic piece is a little eschewed, but you get the idea.
Cheerios
Huh. This is similar to the fix some people did with the digitizer problem. Seems like the the connectors on this phone tend to come loose, to where pressure in the right direction will fix it.
Sent from my MB860 using xda app-developers app
Newbleeto said:
This is the way I fixed the wifi\bluetooth error with continuous rebooting on my Atrix.
I did not come up with it, and I do not guarantee it will work in your device, I'm simply sharing this because it's information that's hard to find and understand. I fixed my device in this way, so have others. I do not take responsability for any damage you might make to your device attempting this fix, and I do not claim it will work forever - it's been two days for me and still great!
For completeness sake, if you guys want to check other proposed fixes and some reasons why they might or might not work, here is this great post by mvniekerk, a person more far more knowlegble then me when it comes to these technological issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071
I'd also like to thank John-aurelio, junior member, who initially posted about this fix here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071&page=4
All credit goes to him!
So, what did I do?
1) I cut out two rectagular pieces of plastic from a pill tin, glued them on top of each other with scotch tape. I think any thin piece of plastic should do.
2) Opened up my Atrix by removing screws with a T5 Torx screwdriver.
3) Slightly raised the motherboard and placed the plastic rectangle under it, with a little bit sticking out into the battery compartment.
To my amazement it worked, it is still working.
I wanted to tell you guys why, but I don't know. Perhaps one of you guys wants to experiment applying pressure to each component separately to find out the culprit?
Also, I'm curious to know if this will work for all of you, or just some of you.
Here are the pics:
This last one is the piece of tin\plastic with tape, side by side with a pencil for scale. Its not the tin I used, but its basically the same, but the one I used has white paint, I don't know if should make a difference. If you're worried about shorts just cover the whole thing in tape or cut plastic from a bottle or something.
The first two are how its supposed to look in the end.
Sorry for no open device pics, I did this yesterday and don't really feel like opening my phone, but if you guys think its needed I'll do it later.
Cheerios
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A detailed How To to show us what to do exactly, we can do much ourselves with just this pics. :/
EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYz_RiuFVRk had anyone seen this?
Will try this with my wifi broken atrix tomorrow.
guidoido004 said:
A detailed How To to show us what to do exactly, we can do much ourselves with just this pics. :/
EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYz_RiuFVRk had anyone seen this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's literally as simple as opening the atrix and placing the plastic under the motherboard, I don't think it gets any easier then that. But I'll try to take more photos.
As for that video, there are reports of people killing their mobiles by breaking the piece holding the battery or killing the nearby ICs trying that. That guy is just too rough. Also, it doesn't show the battery actually being replaced. If you wanna try to replace the battery, better do it gently and stay clear of that video
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
If the solution is to apply pressure to certain parts of the board then it's likely similar to the infamous nVidia issues from around 2008 where the chips were getting hot enough to expand and brake the solder connection or in some cases, rip some of the pads from the board. If that is the case, be careful, as flexing the board the wrong way could eventually lead to making it worse over time.
I can't believe this actually worked. Been using my Atrix for the whole weekend on WIFI. Also finally been able to use my Lapdock properly.
Thanks so much for such a simple fix.
If its any help to anyone, I ended up using an old debit card, as its seems the perfect height to give enough pressure on the board.
It did take a few goes, but as long as you persist with it, it works really well. Plus no more over heating too.
Thanks again
holy crap. 5 minutes and its fixed! thank you
Cause found??
Hi everybody,
I might have an idea what causes the wifi errors. As the wifi gets fixed by changing the motherboard's position, the motherboard is not fastened properly. This might be caused by the vibration function that is located on the part of the motherboard you would need to move up.(see the location of the vibrationfuction in the attachment.)
If so, should this function be less used then?
Thanks Newbleeto! I was so frustrated with this issue. I was initially trying based that youtube video link by someone else which never worked for me. I later decided to try your solution and it worked for me the very first time Appreciate your help!
Thanks, seems to work!
What an interesting tweak. There some validity to this. The Atrix 4G is notorious for wifi, bluetooth, and GPS dropout. This is largely due to kernel and rom. However I have seem plenty of Atrix4Gs with loose antenna clamps. Usually I apply a little pressure in the outside of the clamp to reform it slightly so it will maintain hold on the reciever socket. Second thing I look at is the shielding around the mainboard. This acts as a heatsink and guard. If depressed in anyway will cause massive heating along with grounding. The antenna clusters are not well separated from RF interference from one another to begin with. Metal in general will restricted RF signals considerably depending on its frequency. The greater the frequency the lower it's ability to perpetrate materials.
From the looks of it your directing RF crossover and bounce back away from each antenna. This is a good thing. It also means as long as the phone is not held on its edge towards any receiving end it won't effect talk and data very much.
My experiments with the Atrix4G always had a bit of unpredictable outcome when it came to pressure on the ribbon connections. This would result in the screen blacking out, digitizer over sensitive or non responsive, failure to boot and so on. Pressure is a big deal with these phones so be careful.
Happy tinkering
IT WORKS
after nearly 4 months of this bug i finally had the guts to open up my phone and do this fix.
and it is working , my wifi is back thank you OP. :highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::highfive::victory::victory:
This method works wonderfully. Thanks, OP!
sangyum said:
This method works wonderfully. Thanks, OP!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Spoke too soon. This fix stopped working after two days.... Back to Wifi Error and boot loop. :crying:
I got my wifi to work again, there are two snap on connectors on the same side of the phone. I put 2x pieces of toilet paper cardboard between the frame of the phone and the connector, pushing the connector tighter to the other side.
I'd like to confrm that it works to me !
Thank you, I spent dozens of hours to try solve it.
Newbleeto said:
This is the way I fixed the wifi\bluetooth error with continuous rebooting on my Atrix.
I did not come up with it, and I do not guarantee it will work in your device, I'm simply sharing this because it's information that's hard to find and understand. I fixed my device in this way, so have others. I do not take responsability for any damage you might make to your device attempting this fix, and I do not claim it will work forever - it's been two days for me and still great!
For completeness sake, if you guys want to check other proposed fixes and some reasons why they might or might not work, here is this great post by mvniekerk, a person more far more knowlegble then me when it comes to these technological issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071
I'd also like to thank John-aurelio, junior member, who initially posted about this fix here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1655071&page=4
All credit goes to him!
So, what did I do?
1) I cut out two rectagular pieces of plastic from a pill tin, glued them on top of each other with scotch tape. I think any thin piece of plastic should do.
2) Opened up my Atrix by removing screws with a T5 Torx screwdriver. If you don't know how to do this check out this teardown by ifixit: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Motorola+Atrix+4G+Teardown/4964/1
3) Slightly raised the motherboard and placed the plastic rectangle under it, with a little bit sticking out into the battery compartment.
To my amazement it worked, it is still working.
...
Cheerios
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did this as well, and it's been working perfectly for over a week now. Battery life has tripled to 24h (back where it used to be, what a relief) and the wifi is back to being perfect.
In my case, I cut a small piece out of an old credit card and inserted into the section highlighted in the attached picture, inside to out (from the battery bay towards the side). There are flat cables/strips underneath and you probably don't want to insert your spacer material from the outside in. Make sure that the plastic strip fits completely underneath the board, otherwise you won't be able to properly close the back.
Thanks!
To add some data to this can all of you confirm the kernel and rom you are useing before and after this mod. Would help all of us in the future for reference. Thanks.
Cab121 said:
To add some data to this can all of you confirm the kernel and rom you are useing before and after this mod. Would help all of us in the future for reference. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, no problem!
Atrix 4G (Bell Canada)
Unlocked and rooted by yours truly (don't ask how, I'm still not sure I know what I did)
CynaogenMod 10.1 from epinter: Megathread or linuxmobile.org site, builds 2013-08-07 + hporch32 kernel (before and after mod) & 2013-08-26 + hporch32 kernel (after mod)
Radio: Telstra N_01.87.00R
Everything started a while ago, sd card stopped working properly with error "sd card unexpectedly removed", then wifi begins to drop connection.
Nothing to lose, i thought. I read that baking helped some G4 users. Disassembled the phone, took out motherboard and put it in an oven for 7mins (185C/365F)
Results: It worked! Sd card works fine, wifi is good. But effect lasted only for 4 days =). This morning I’ve got "sd card unexpectedly removed" again. Wifi is still working though.
This is my experience I’d like to share.
PSA: I've googled much for sd-card and wifi issues with g3, and if you've experience any of these: sdcard, sim card, wifi, display issues - it's the beginning of the end. You'd better start looking for a replacement.
Also, I’d strongly recommend you not to buy used G3. The risk you'll get phone that won't last long is very high.
(sorry for poor english)
Hi mate, sorry to read this story, but exactly same situation happrned with my fiancee g3. Exact the same order of things, i was also trying to bake it but it didnt helped.
PS. It was also bought 2nd hand.
This makes no logical sense at all. Could someone please explain to me what you think baking the mainboard does?
The only possible reason for doing this that I can think of is to dry it out if it got submerged in water for an extended period of time. However, the phone naturally gets hot enough to evaporate any internal moisture quite quickly so there goes that theory.
I think what is happening for the strange folks that do this, is just the process of disassembling and reassembling the phone cleans up the ribbon connections and helps dirty contacts.
I strongly recommend no one with any common sense bake their mainboard.
The only possible reason for doing this that I can think of is to dry it out if it got submerged in water
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The idea is to reflow solder joints. (at least google says so =)
think what is happening for the strange folks that do this, is just the process of disassembling and reassembling the phone cleans up the ribbon connections and helps dirty contacts.
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No. The phone was reassembled millions times before with no such effect. And it never been in water.
Anyway, this is quite popular recipe to "fix" G3 and G4. I'm not claiming it will help. Just share my experience.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGG3/comments/550a3u/just_bake_it_in_the_oven/
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGG3/comments/5e0nx7/info_for_those_thinking_about_baking_their/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikFbhcyO3Nk
UvarovG said:
The idea is to reflow solder joints. (at least google says so =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea, sorry, you can't believe everything you see on the internet. Even this! lol. But, anyone experienced in soldering will tell ya that to repair a bad solder you need to remove all existing solder, re-apply flux, and re-solder (usually on a room temp bread board! lol). If you just re-heat existing solder you will usually increase resistance and weaken the solder contact even more.
Furthermore, I'm not aware of any solder points on the G3 board that sustain any kind of wear or movement. AND, when you bake the board you're also baking the SoC! :crying: If you got bad solder contacts because of overheating, then your SoC is probably fried anyways.
Whole thing smells bad to me, and I caution others to stay away from this.
There might not be enough heat inside a mobile phone to melt the solder joints, however the continuous stress from heating up and cooling down will weaken the crystaline structure and eventually make the solder joint break.
If you can manage to apply flux to the cracked solder you can usually recover the joint by reflowing it, however in case of BGAs (Ball Grid Array) microchips with hundreds of contacts (balls), where all solder joints are "sandwiched" between the PCB and chip , it's very hard to do so without the access to professional tools.
Reflowing in a household oven is usually just a temporary fix, as no flux manages to reach the broken joint, so all you do with reflowing is melting the cracked solder, which will stay weakend after cooling down again. New cracks in the crystaline structure will form pretty quickly. That's why baking will make the device work for a limited period of time.
The use of less reliable / proven solder compositions (aka leadfree vs leaded solder) also plays a role in this. Leaded solder is usually superior to lead free solder in regards to long time solder joint stability.
A better type of fix would be to reball the BGA, however this usually involves the ues of special tools. When you reball a chip you remove it from the circuit board (usually using hot air) and remove all the old weakend solder and put new, healthy solder blobs (balls) on the chip and then reassemble it.
Cheers.
AlwaysLucky said:
Yea, sorry, you can't believe everything you see on the internet. Even this! lol. But, anyone experienced in soldering will tell ya that to repair a bad solder you need to remove all existing solder, re-apply flux, and re-solder (usually on a room temp bread board! lol). If you just re-heat existing solder you will usually increase resistance and weaken the solder contact even more.
Furthermore, I'm not aware of any solder points on the G3 board that sustain any kind of wear or movement. AND, when you bake the board you're also baking the SoC! :crying: If you got bad solder contacts because of overheating, then your SoC is probably fried anyways.
Whole thing smells bad to me, and I caution others to stay away from this.
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Might as well bake away...because the phone is going to be dead soon anyway.
It's probably not a wear/movement issue - it's an LG quality issue. They had a bad run of boards that made it into the field. Anything from board contamination/improper handling, poor soldering techniques, bad solder, etc. can cause faulty solder joints that fail over time as the soc heats and cools over and over. Better R&D and higher quality standards at the manufacturing plants should prevent issues like this, but hey - sh*t happens sometimes. At least we didn't have the G4 bootloop issue caused by... "After a prolonged investigation, LG has identified the source of the problem as a “loose contact between components” and vowed to repair it..." http://www.androidauthority.com/lg-admits-g4-bootloop-problem-hardware-fault-669603/
Some people "fixed" their issues temporarily by either: a)putting tape on strategic parts of the board which then creates enough pressure when the phone is reassembeld to temporarily "fix" the faulty solder joint(s); or b) by - frighteningly (but doing so as a last resort, so I get the reason for trying it) - baking the mother board for another temporary "fix" of the faulty solder joints. And yes, from personal experience trying to repair a friend's phone, it does actually work for a short time until the solder joints fail again.
I agree with you that the only way to truly fix it is to remove the old solder, clean everything up, reflux and resolder - but that isn't cost feasible for most people who don't have a bga solder machine laying around. Bottom line is once the G3 acts up and re-soldering is the only way to bring it back to life - it's time to start shopping for a new phone.
startswithPendswithOOH said:
Might as well bake away...because the phone is going to be dead soon anyway.
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Yes, and you will kill it much faster by baking it at 185C to soften the lead-free solder. If you do that, you will ruin the SoC which is only meant to handle temps up to 80C. Not to mention you will increase electrical resistance at the solder points.
I know, that would be sooo cool if this had any kind of possibility of doing any good at all. But, the science and physics is simply not there. This is an old-wives tale, a myth, a hoax. Call it what you will, but never encourage anyone to do this. Ever.
AlwaysLucky said:
Call it what you will, but never encourage anyone to do this. Ever.
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Click to collapse
Agreed. Never bake electronics. It's common sense.
Now if the phone is dead anyway and someone has nothing to lose & wants to give it a shot that's up to them, but even if it does help it won't be long lasting. Just buy a new phone and save the frustration.
relevant link https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5tw0ev/fix_your_nexus_5x_by_tossing_the_board_in_the_oven/
While using an "oven" to solder components is an actual technique, it's certainly not done in a home oven, and certainly not done the way most of those guides show.
I have repeated countless times in countless LG G3 threads with issues but no one wants to listen -- DO NOT PUT YOUR MOTHERBOARD IN THE OVEN.
This is not actual, proper repair steps. You might get lucky, and start working for a few days, and then it will be worse. As explained by many others in this thread, if not done properly, you will only further weaken the bad solder connections.
It has been caused that problems in the phone are caused by connections getting loose/overheating over time. Not all phones are prone to it, and surely use scenario will have something to do with it.
A better repairing technique for this would be applying pressure with a thermal pad to the SoC. This technique can also be found in many places around the forum. Another small non-conductive piece like paper or plastic from an old debit card would work as well, but thermal pads are best suited so they can help with the heat dissipation.
@UvarovG linked a great thread with a lot of relevant content in it if you are actually interested in learning.
Here are some links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shn7LdIrViQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AcEt073Uds
And others.