NOKIA N9: REPLACING USB CONNECTOR

For the past 3-4 months, whenever I am home, my 6 years old son always try to quitely borrowed my N9 to play the game in it and also watching video. Even so, as the battery drying out, he will recharge n9 himself by pushing the usb cable into the Nokia N9 USB socket.

However, as he is still only 6 years old, that usually ending up slowly breaking and damaging my N9 USB connector bit by bit. In the end, thing that I’m worried happened.  I am not able to charging my anymore. Even worse, I am not able to  connect my phone to my  computer for the purposed of copy and backing up the data.

I ending up using feature phone nokia 101 for several weeks as my replacement phone…the good thing is that, I don’t need to charge my phone everyday like I did with my N9, which is very good. With nokia 101, it take me 5-6 days before the next charge.

Back to the nokia N9, to ask NOKIA to repair my N9, it will probably cost me a fortune. So, I decide, let try to do it myself. Googling myself on the internet,  I managed to find the cheap part of USB connector for nokia N9 which cost me £3.

figure: picture of usb connector

Other important thing is to know how to diassemble the phone properly and not to damage it. So, again, I used internet such youtube and google to search. It is very important not to damage the phone during disassemble process as very little mistake could cost me the phone.

Therefore, below are step-by-step process I did to replace my usb connector. And it is quite adventurous. (unfortunately, during the process of desoldering and soldering, I not able to snap the pictures as there is no camera available at that time).

1)firstly, I disassembled the phone to separate the motherboard from its body carefully by using proper tools.

I use below link to download the pdf file of disassemble procedure, and the procedure provided by the pdf manual below is quite good and helpful.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fyyjnlt9vys4txr/Nokia%20N9%20RM-696L1L2%20v5.0.pdf

figure: pictures of after disassembled

once everything is separated, the process to remove and replace new connector can be started.

2) Secondly, metal bar covering the usb socket on the motherboard need to be remove. Here is what I did, I heating up the solder on one side, and used thin metal knife to jack the metal cover gently. Once one side is lifted, I heating up the second one and successfully separating the metal cover from the usb socket

figure: the picture of metal cover with usb connector and how to remove metal cover

3) Then, the process to remove the usb socket can be start. This is the trickiest part where, I am taking about 1.5 hours just to remove and replace the new part. After old broken part is removed, the board is cleaned using flux removal especially on the area of desoldering, on top of usb socket thread. After that, the new usb socket part can be mounted for resolder.

figure: removing the usb connector

4) Multimeter is also required to verify the connectivity/continuity after soldering. Once everything is properly connected, the parts can be assembled again using the procedure provided previously. And once all done, nokia N9 is switched ON and lucky for me that everything are working properly. I tested the calling speaker function, wireless, charging and data transfer using usb. all working fined now.

Figure: after replace usb connector

Now, my Nokia N9 is back to work again. However, I am losing interest of using it any more after several weeks of using nokia 101. So, at the moment, I will remained using nokia 101 as for me, it very lite, and required less charging interval (5-6 days per charge). And for Nokia n9, I only use it when I wanted to use navigator for navigation to unfamiliar place.

#apologised for English as I am beginner in English. However, I like to learn English and want to improved and anyone who spot the mistake, please teach/explain me what is the correct one and why it is wrong. Thanks a lot