TSGL: Mobile phone - hope someone can help with this

Sat Jun 28 03:13:53 EDT 2008

Hi H.Davis,
thanks a lot for taking the trouble to find the correct link - I have the 
link the way I passed it on saved in a Word document and it does open just 
the picture of the board in my Ulead PhotoImpact. Anyway, thanks a lot for 
your input (the large shiny area on top must be something else anyway as it 
is nothing on the board actually). I will translate it all (German) and give 
it to my husband to think about and see whether he can find out something 
about where the cold solder joint is. He told me first thing when he started 
already that he would not like trying to actually re-solder but he thought 
about taking that kind of silver colour that is used to repair the heating 
in rear windows of cars!? The people from that Siemens SX1-forum by the way 
were probably youngsters who do everything that can be done for no or little 
money when their "cool mobile" needs repair, and translating their "cool 
words" might be even more complicated with the poor Google translation. The 
cold solder joint in this spot is said to be a common fault of especially 
this mobile and since Siemens gave up the mobile branch, nobody could get it 
repaired afterwards any more but everybody was looking for a way to repair 
it.

Thanks also John, for telling me about the problematic link - but I had a 
small accident falling with my bicycle yesterday afternoon and so could not 
go online since before 7 p.m. to check my mails as I felt quite sore and was 
just sitting where I sat down at last.

have a great weekend everybody
Heidi

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "H Davis" <hdavis1 at gmail.com>
To: "Tech Support Guy Mailing List" <list at tsgserver.com>
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: TSGL: Mobile phone - hope someone can help with this

> Heidi,
>
> The link you copied is missing some characters in the middle where the
> ... is. I think it should be:
> http://www.blue-backlight.de/de/umbau_de/SiemensSX1/umb_sx1_11.jpg
>
> and the forum page that references it is:
> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.mobil-talk.de/benq-siemens/691-sx1-wiederbeleben-alle-tricks-versucht.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.blue-backlight.de/de/umba%2Bumb_sx1_11.jpg%2B%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DHTJ%26sa%3DG
>
> I tried the Google translate function on the (german?) forum but it
> still made little sense to me.
>
> From the picture there appear to be only 2 areas on the side of the
> board that's shown that you could hope to repair by re-soldering; the
> large shiny circular area at the top and the double row of 8 in the
> lower left. These 2 rows could be the flash memory you refer to but who
> knows. The large shiny circle is probably not the flash memory. Try
> looking on the other side of your board for any components with writing
> and see if you can deduce which is the flash memory chip. Someone else
> on this list might be able to tell you, more specifically, what to look
> for - nomenclature, size of chip, arrangement of pins, etc.
>
> A cold solder joint often looks dull, and perhaps slightly granular,
> compared to the usual shiny color of a good solder joint. However, after
> a period of use the shiny joints will have become somewhat dull also,
> making this method of distinguishing the bad one iffy at best.
>
> If it once worked and now has failed, you might detect a crack in the
> blob of solder using a magnifying glass. Again, no guarantee. Cold
> solder joints can appear perfectly normal and yet make no connection
> between the pin and the copper circuit material. That's what makes them
> extremely difficult to find. Most folks will just re-solder all the pins
> in the suspect area and hope for the best.
>
> As far as the hair dryer goes, I have real misgivings about that. First,
> I don't think a regular hairdryer will get hot enough and second, it
> will heat a big area risking damage to a lot of components. The aluminum
> foil you mention is probably an attempt to prevent this.
>
> I suggest getting a soldering iron, around 25 watts, with a small
> conical tip. Use rosin core solder or solid core solder with separate
> rosin flux. Don't use any acid based flux. Here in the US you could get
> all that for about $10 at Radio Shack. If you don't feel up to that task
> take it to someone who has experience soldering; a friend, a technician
> at a computer store that does repairs, etc. If you can point at what you
> want soldered he could do it in about 10 minutes. There's no guarantee
> that it will work but it shouldn't cost much.
>
> Soldering on these small circuit boards requires some skill because
> overheating will easily damage the components and an unskilled repair
> person can easily overheat the component he's (she's) trying to repair.
>
> If you decide to try it yourself I can expand on these instructions but
> the key, of course, is to correctly identify the faulty connection, if
> that's the problem.
>
> Good luck,
>
> H Davis
>
> Computerfee wrote:
>> Hi there everybody,
>> My husband is trying at last to repair the old mobile phone of our son 
>> which is a Siemens SX1. We found online, the solution for the problems 
>> seems to be a cold solder joint of the Flash Memory on the printed 
>> circuit board which you have to re-do. Now the problem is our lack of 
>> knowledge where to find the point where it has to be done. The 
>> description of the repair is rather vague - wrap plastic-part of two 
>> plug-connections with aluminium foil, put some solder on the edge of the 
>> printed circuit board and heat it up with a hair drier until it gets 
>> liquid. Well, nice clear - the edge of the thing could be anywhere. here 
>> is a link to the photo of the printed circuit board in question it is 
>> part of a description for changing LED colours, so that's why these spots 
>> are marked - http://www.blue-backlight.de/de/umba...umb_sx1_11.jpg Maybe 
>> it is not on this side even but on the back of it, but I could not find 
>> anything else but the description above and the forum where I found it, 
>> seems to be quite old, as the mobile is quite old as well.
>>
>> So I am just hoping anybody around does have an idea that could help us 
>> here.
>> Thanks a lot
>> Best wishes
>> Heidi
>>
>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> H Davis   hdavis1 at gmail.com
>
>
>
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