Thursday, October 15, 2009

CECT i9+ Touch Screen Repair


Around 9 months i ordered a cect i9 quad-band gsm phone, which is also unlocked. Has a dual sim card slot, so u can use it as a business phone and personal phone with your t-mobile account, and at&t account. It's a great phone overall, and i've love using the Opera web browser to browse the internet on it while anywhere with cell phone connectivity. Includes bluetoth, JAVA, and FM radio, 1.3MP camera and video recorder. Upto 8GB of memory with a microsd memory card.

$80 phone, free shipping. Check ebay, but i would recommend this seller in particular.

So MY phone lasted great upto about six weeks ago, when i noticed cracks on the screen. The LCD screen itself wasnt scratched (thankfully,) however the touch screen which is on-top of the LCD screen was cracked. After using the fone for another week, the cracks got bigger. Eventually the only part of the touch screen i could use was the lower 1/3 of the screen. This made navigation quite a hassle. Dialing phone numbers which were not already saved on the SIM card was impossible. The image to the left describes what i am talking about. Click any of the images on this page for a larger view.





The next thing you want to do is power off the fone (in my case, just removing the battery pack.) Remove the SIM Card as well as your MicroSD memory card. Your progress should match the image to the right.



After all the perepherials are removed, you can begin to disassemble the phone. The kit i ordered online from hong kong ($4.99 with free shipping --- and took just 12days to arrive to Texas.) It comes with some rubber tools used to disassemble the phone (the same tools included in iPhone screen repair kits.) After unscrewing the 4 small screws holding the phones plastic case securly to the pcb, behin to use the prying took to begin popping off the case from it's plastic inserts. This is a simple process of prying slightly, and waiting for pieces to snap out of place.





You will then notice when taking off the case that the volume control input buttons are 'stuck,' and prevent you from remving the case. This is only behind held onto the case by a weak adhesive, work the buttons off slowly and your good to keep disassembling the phone.When flipping over the back of the case you will be presented with the cable that connects the touch screen to the pcb board.


Soldering off the Touch screen connections. Just apply heat with a low-wattage soldering-iron. use pliers or slight force and the connections will pop right off. they are held on by a light layer of solder. which just happens to mostly stay on the pcb board, aiding in reconnection of the new touch screen.





Next you need to take the front panel of the fone, and use the plastic wedging tool to remove the touch screen that lies over the LCD screen. Simple process, just becaseful as my fone's touchscreen had glass in it and could had easily cut me if it wasnt for careful handling. After removing the front panel, you will see somethign si,milar to the image on the right. The Touch screen interface is fully exposed, and the front panel is gone. You can see the 4 wires traveling down from the touch-screen which prives an x-y axis coordinate over a serial connection to the phones microprocessor, and the fone is then able to tell what the user is pressing.


Reattach the main button button. Flip everything over on the main phone, so the lcd is facing down (make sure to set it on a cloth material, or perferballymicro-cloth if able.) Now you need to solder the lcd touch screen connector, to the phones main lcd board. This is an easy process. The touch screen connection has 4 pins on each side (but only uses 4 pins) with holes in it. to held the solder seep through and keep the connection. I simply applied solder across the connections. Some of the connections were touching each other.(See image of the right that yelps out Muhaha!) I pulled out the solder wich, put it atop of the solder incident, then the soldering iron on top of the solder wick. This causes excess solder to absorb into the copper & flux covered solder brain. Leaving underneath a PERFECT connection.






























The touch-screen replacement is complete at this point. Now that is all left to do is re-apply the back case of the fone. Screen back in the 4 screws which hold the phone together. Then insert your MicroSD memory card, follwed by the SIM card and finally the battery back. Turn the phone back on, and if you were as lucky as I am (mad soldering skills honestly) then your greeted with the same phone, but with no longer a cracked touchscreen. The fone's touch screen now responds on all parts of the screen correctly. I forgot to clean the lcd screne when i took this picture... didnt really so many finger prints.






Video of the phone working perfectly now:

1 comment:

  1. you are awesome :) I got 2 i9+ . One of them with broken screen!!

    ReplyDelete