replacing the digitizer

Touchscreen digitizer repair
How to separate the digitizer from the screen?
If you break your touchscreen while your screen is intact, and you wand to repair it on your own assuming you found a replacement digitizer on Ebay or elsewhere, be very VERY VERY careful. I cannot stress that enough when separating the broken glass from the rest of the phone. It is very likely that the screen is glued on the digitizer as it happened in my case with my Star B92M, and when you try to pull the digitizer off the phone the screen may come with it. And if you cant pull it neatly, you will break it.
So I was thinking, how could someone solve this problem? And it hit me. One could probably use dental floss to separate the glass from the screen in a clean and non invasive manner.

Usually the digitizer is glued in the periphery of the phone, hence with the floss one could be able to separate that thin piece of adhesive and free the screen intact.
Unfortunately I managed to break my screen before thinking of that, but hopefully it will save others.

Some thoughts on the mobile phone hype

I find really amusing the hype around new smartphones and how the details "leak" before the official introduction. And a bunch of guys speculating if it is going to be 10core or chimp glass with satellite communications or how obese it is, if the camera is 900 or 901 megapixels, how may terrabytes of ram and how many MAh in the battery. Honestly all this hype leaves me totally cold. I am only interested in one thing. The effin PRICE. Being unemployed and shit, anything beyond the 100 $, €, ¥ etc is too much. And as I was telling to someone in a comment I am an android fan simply because it is customizable and cheap. I can get a modern smartphone (even with limited capabilities) for less than 100$ new and out of contract.

I am an android fan because android backs up the democratization of the smartphone market.
It is also called diversity of choices. Why should I be stuck with an iphone that has only 4'' 3.5'' screen if I want a bigger screen or more buttons or whatever else? Diversity helps people find what is right for them. Not receive only what is available.
Moreover why the eff should I pay Apple or anyone else a HUGE premium just cause they feel like it? 

Lets imagine a world where only Apple had the patent on the modern smartphone and RIM on the smartphone with full keyboard. And lets assume that they both charge a pretty penny for their products. 400$ and upwards. Where does that leave a bunch of people who do not want or cant afford such a high cost device? The company says essentially that if you want to be modern and trendy, you got to buy our device. You can't? "Up yours". Leaving billions of consumers the sole alternative to use only feature phones or used smartphones (which lets don't forget have no official support after a couple of years) and without OS upgrades become obsolete-junk.

SOOOOO to get back to the original point, every month or at least at every technology summit a company will show off their new, awesome, cool, amazing, over the top mobile device. And apart from Apple who admittedly brought innovation with the iPhone since then, the mobiles will be a touchscreen with computer like capabilities. Or a miniaturized powerhouse PC as very nicely was put in the film "IRON SKY". 

So please please please all these tech blogs out there stop with the nonsense. We do not need rumors anymore. If you have give us the facts. STOP speculating.

Faithfully yours 

Me

Samsung H1 unresponsive touchscreen problem solved

Among the mobile phones I own or I am responsible for functioning properly is a Samsung H1 360 i8320. At some point and after many falls to the floor the bottom part of the digitizer (the touchscreen that is) stopped responding. The lower buttons 8,0,9 were not working anymore. So if your sim pin or your security pin had these numbers on, you were screwed with an unlock-able phone (nice for phone robbers, but thats an other story). So how to fix that? I wasn't entirely sure that the digitizer was the problem but I went on and bought the cheapest one I could find on Ebay for about 10 euros or less. It arrived promptly in about a week and using the disassembly guide here I opened up the phone replaced the digitizer and put it back together. Amazingly (or perhaps not so much) the phone was working once again. I have to say that for 10 euros the digitizer had a couple of visible scratches while the old one had none cause there was a plastic film protector on it. Of course this film cant protect from falls and here we stand.

Update 8/2/14: A second attempt to replace the partially working digitizer buying one from ebay resulted in the new digitizer not working at all and returned it to the seller:( Strangely when i put the old digitizer back on the unresponsive part was working again even if intermittently.


Μεταξύ των κινητών που διαθέτω είναι και το Samsung H1, το οποίο έχοντας υποφέρει κάμποσες πτώσεις και κακομεταχείριση  κάποια στιγμή η οθόνη αφής έπαψε να ανταποκρίνεται στο κάτω μέρος. Pin δεν έμπαινε οπότε το τηλέφωνο ήταν άχρηστο. Το πρόβλημα διορθώθηκε για λιγότερο από 10 ευρώ με την αγορά ενός digitizer από το ebay και 20 λεπτά με το κατσαβίδι. Χρησιμοποιώντας τις οδηγίες για την αποσυναρμολόγηση που υπάρχουν εδώ η οθόνη αφής αλλάχτηκε και voila, το τηλέφωνο λειτουργεί σαν καινούριο.

Μια δεύτερη προσπάθεια για αλλαγή το digitizer που μετά από κανά χρόνο σταμάτησε να λειτουργεί πάλι λόγω κακομεταχείρησης, κατέλειξε στο ότι το νέο ανταλλακτικό, δεν δούλευε καθόλου με το τηλέφωνο. Έτσι το έστειλα πίσω στον πωλητή. Περιέργως το παλίο εξάρτημα άρχισε να λειτουργεί όταν το ξανάβαλα πάνω στο κινητό

ZTE blade user experience and problem solving update

Having a ZTE Blade for about a year now, I was using Swedish Spring from the begining as "install and forget". Very happy with it, both the device and the custom rom.

A few months ago however, as I plugged it in to charge overnight only to realize in the morning that it didn't charge. After cleaning the battery data and using 2 different chargers I thought that I had a faulty charger. And stop thinking about it. However browsing modaco yesterday I found a thread discussing the same problem. I haven't used that charger since, though I will give it a try.

The chargers I currently use is a second orange san fran charger similar to the first one, and a samsung H1. Both seem to charge the phone just fine.

The second problem I encountered recently was sudden phonecall hang ups. About 40-50 seconds into a call the phone would hang up without any obvious reason. I thought there was time for an upgrade and so I upgraded from Swedish spring gen1 to Moldovan mile high also gen1. Prior to the update I backed up all data possible. Astro for apps, call logs backup & restore for calls, sms backup & restore for sms's and my root backup for everything. One can never be too safe...

After the back up, I updated the rom. Wiped cache and it booted normally. Then the problem egun. Immediately after inserting the sim lock code the phone showed an error message

"The process com.android.phone has stopped unexpectedly" press ok and after ok I was sent back to sim lock screen to insert the pin number. Damn! A quick look online showed a couple ofthreads mentioning wipe all data/system restore as a solution. So the phone was factory reset through clockwork and rebooted. It Worked!!!! It kept working even after restoring all the backed up data amd apps.

We will see how it goes.

On other news I absolutely love some features from every rom I've tried and I don't like other features so much. I wish there was an easy breazy tool to make my own custom rom choosing which apps and features to include and which to abolish. As far as I know there is no such app so far. Pity. The once upon a time blog rom would have been a hit!

Αναβάθμιση λογισμικού στο ZTE BLADE

Όπως έγραψα σε προηγούμενο ποστ απέκτησα κινητό Android. Το πήρα από Αγγλία, 99 λίρες + 10 χρόνο ομιλίας. Δηλαδή περίπου 120 ευρώ. Γλύτωσα έτσι 30 περίπου κερατιάτικα που ζητάει εδώ η Wind.
Μετά το αρχικό απαραίτητο (δωρεάν) ξεκλείδωμα, για να λειτουργεί με τα δίκτυα στην Ελλάδα, φόρτωσα το Japanese jellyfish, που εκείνη την περίοδο ήταν από τις πιο σταθερές και εύχρηστες παραλλαγές λειτουργικού για το ZTE BLADE. Και ήταν μια χαρά εκτός ίσως από το wifi το οποίο ενώ στην αρχή φαινόταν να λειτουργεί άψογα, όσο περνούσε ο καιρός εμφάνιζε προβλήματα σύνδεσης.
Σήμερα πήρα την απόφαση να αλλάξω κοστούμι και να δοκιμάσω το Swedish Spring. Αναλυτικές και εύκολες οδηγίες μπορείτε να βρείτε εδώ στα Αγγλικά.

Για να δούμε πως θα ταιριάξει το νέο κοστούμι.

Υ.Γ. προχτές αγόρασα και μια μνήμη micro SD 16GB η οποία όμως δεν έλεγε να παίξει με τίποτα στο Jelly Fish. Ε καλά να μην είμαι υπερβολικός δεν έκανα και πολλές προσπάθειες για να δουλέψει ίσως χρειαζόνταν ένα γενικό wipe το οποίο όμως κρίνεται απαράδεκτο. Τι διάβολο; Κάθε φορά που αλλάζω μνήμη πρέπει να σβήνω τα πάντα από το κινητό; Τέλος πάντων μετά την εγκατάσταση του S.S. και το απαραίτητο wipe, η κάρτα δούλεψε με το που την έβαλα μέσα.

ZTE BLADE

Απέκτησα λοιπόν το πρώτο μου Android smartphone. Περιττό να πω πως δεν θα έδινα φράγκο για να αποκτήσω κάποιο iphone το οποίο κάπου πήρε το αυτί μου ότι λόγω κρίσης θα βγάλει και "οικονομικό" μοντέλο. Αναμένω να δω τι σόι θα είναι αυτό.
Δεν μαρέσουν τα κλειστά προϊόντα. Αυτά που δεν μπορείς να πειράξεις αν χαλάσουν, αυτά που απαιτούν από το χρήστη αποκλειστική αλληλεπίδραση με την εταιρία κατασκευής αποκλειστικά συμβόλαια, αποκλειστικό σέρβις, αποκλειστικά ανταλλακτικά, πάντα με το αζημείωτο. Καταλαβαίνω ότι και οι εταιρίες χρειάζονται να βγάζουν κέρδη, αλλά αυτό ας είναι με μέτρο. Είμαι φανατικά υπέρ του μανιφέστου του ifixit.

Χρησιμοποιώντας λοιπόν τις πληροφορίες στο orangesanfrancisco.co.uk και το modaco το τηλέφωνο ξεκλειδώθηκε, αναβαθμίστηκε και βγήκαν τα προγράμματα που είχε μαμίσια και κάθε 2 λεπτά ζητούσαν να πληρώσεις (πως θα βγάλουν χρήματα οι εταιρίες άλλωστε) και τώρα φυσάει. Τρέχει λέμε.

Sony Ericsson C510 = A crappy Phone, AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS

I must admit I don't have Sony Ericsson mobile phones in a high esteem. The reason for that is mainly the usage of proprietary memory format the memory stick and its variations. As if the world didn't have enough formats and needed one more.

I got as a Christmas present the Sony Ericsson C510. Not thrilled by the choice of Santa Claus who didn't bother to ask me if I had any preferences, I started using it, since my other phone a Nokia 6500 slide, is having some problems with its screen. (I also dislike mobiles with moving parts, but this one was very nice and came free).

Back to the C510. Within the first 5 days using it, I found two problems, one very annoying. If the battery is taken out of the phone even for a few seconds, the date on the phone resets to the 00-01-2000 and has to be set every damn time. The other problem was after I opened the camera door to take a pic. The screen split in two equal halves and inverted itself being only readable in mirror. Holly shit. Same problem my Nokia has after 3 years of use, from the beginning!!
















Another issue is that not all camera features are compatible with each other. If you want to zoom while taking 3, 2 or even 1 megapixel photos you are out of luck.
Adding to that the autofocus feature is relatively nice but quite slow which strips it of the usefulness it could have.
Moreover it has a facebook function, meaning it can uploas pic to your account. Personally I can not think of a less desirable function and they don't even support Ebay.

I get the impression that Sony is trying to make money using the Cyber-shot logo without actually trying hard enough.

Bottom line AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS

Update, 29/7/18

I got a bag of old mobile phones to play with from a friend, and among them there were a few SONY models. In one of those, he had forgotten a micro memory stick. The moment I saw it I was thinking how I despised SONY phones for actually using proprietary memory formats. And now what a coincidence, I happened to read this post from the past with the same basic thoughts...!