Anyone tried to repair a mobile phone?

JohnB47

My missus got her Nokia Lumia 635 soaked a few months ago. I tried drying it carefully but it was dead. She has a replacement now (different make).

I took it to a repair shop but after leaving it with them they said they didn't have others from which to swop bits, so they couldn't help.

She had some nice pics on it, so I'm wondering if I should pay around £30 for a used one, buy a set of phone screwdrivers and try swapping out modules to see if I can get it working.

So, are mobile phones modular? Can I swop out bits of it until it starts working?

I've just looked at a web site help guide on disassembly and screen repair. It shows that the motherboard has three big chips on it, plus a few bits and bobs - probably power supply/battery related. Is it possible, I wonder, to swap out each chipset in turn to see if I can get it working enough to get the pictures out? I wonder which chipset will have the pictures stored on it (impossible question, I know).

Anyway, any help welcome.

System

They are modular but if the main board is dead and its stored on the onboard storage on the main board then you're looking at some serious expensive recovery which can't just be done by swapping bits out or your local computer shop.

pmduk

In future, it's always worth taking advantage of the offers for online storage and backup of photos as you take them.

that

not all water is equal. My friend took his then new state of the art 2 week old samsung s8 which is 'waterproof' to the seaside, decided to take some shots while in the sea, and guess what happened? The sand did not help either

Now if it was rain water then he would have stood a better chance.

Although electronic components are inherently wateproof, the wrong voltage in the wrong place and it is a gonner.

First thing to change is the battery, and they have to work out the rest from there.

There will possibly be a vid on youtube on how to strip it

macman

The motherboard will have probably corroded: its not cost effective to repair it, though it could technically be done.

takman

JohnB47 wrote: »

My missus got her Nokia Lumia 635 soaked a few months ago. I tried drying it carefully but it was dead. She has a replacement now (different make).

I took it to a repair shop but after leaving it with them they said they didn't have others from which to swop bits, so they couldn't help.

She had some nice pics on it, so I'm wondering if I should pay around £30 for a used one, buy a set of phone screwdrivers and try swapping out modules to see if I can get it working.

So, are mobile phones modular? Can I swop out bits of it until it starts working?

I've just looked at a web site help guide on disassembly and screen repair. It shows that the motherboard has three big chips on it, plus a few bits and bobs - probably power supply/battery related. Is it possible, I wonder, to swap out each chipset in turn to see if I can get it working enough to get the pictures out? I wonder which chipset will have the pictures stored on it (impossible question, I know).

Anyway, any help welcome.

The most important question is how is she now backing up the photos so this doesn't happen again?

I would recommend a cloud storage service which automatically backs them up.

chrisw99

takman wrote: »

The most important question is how is she now backing up the photos so this doesn't happen again?

I would recommend a cloud storage service which automatically backs them up.

Not all people are happy with their photos being stored elsewhere, where anyone potentially can look at them.

Reminds me of the time I was at a music festival, stood at the urinal as you do with a pint in one hand, trying to text with the other, and managed to accidentally take a picture straight down of my naughty bits.
Deleted it straight away.

Roll on 6 months later, browsing through my photos when I linked a tablet to the cloud, and there was my old feller in all it's glory. I didn't realise at the time if you deleted from the phone it didn't delete from the cloud storage.

Moss5

My Lumia phones came with free cloud storage. Was Skydrive camera roll, now One Drive. When a photo is taken, it is uploaded to outlook.com/one drive/photos.
We sign-in on a PC using our live.co.uk email address.
The lumia syncs calendar, mail and contacts.
You may find your photos are up there somewhere.

PRAISETHESUN

It may be possible to do some DIY repairs, but if the main board is gone, then its probably beyond repair. The internal storage will likely be integrated, so you probably won't be able to remove it and put it in a working device to recover the data. You may be able to get a data recovery specialist to recover any files you may have left on there, but again you are at the mercy of whether or not the internal drive has been damaged. Moving forward it might be worthwhile thinking about how you could backup up stuff - I personally don't like cloud services due to their potential to be hacked, etc, and I physically backup the contents of my phone to my PC once a week.

JohnB47

OK folks, thanks for all the feedback.

I found a guide to dismantling the phone, so I might have a go just for fun. The missus now has a 32Gb card in her replacement phone and we've set the phone to store all the photos on there. Annoyingly we found out that her Nokia had a slot for a card only when we removed the back to dry it out. They didn't tell us it could accept separate storage when we bought it. Arrrrrg.

Checked her cloud - no luck but thanks for the hint.

Great story about the todger photo!

chrisw99

JohnB47 wrote: »

OK folks, thanks for all the feedback.

I found a guide to dismantling the phone, so I might have a go just for fun. The missus now has a 32Gb card in her replacement phone and we've set the phone to store all the photos on there. Annoyingly we found out that her Nokia had a slot for a card only when we removed the back to dry it out. They didn't tell us it could accept separate storage when we bought it. Arrrrrg.

Checked her cloud - no luck but thanks for the hint.

Great story about the todger photo!

Don't forget even with the SD card, she may lose her phone or get it stolen, so backups (to cloud or PC) regularly are still very useful.