I’ve been having issues with my bottom module, specifically the microphone: lots of static, I could barely be heard, but pressing down hard in certain places on the bottom part of the phone mitigated the issue as long as long as I held it down. One day, complete silence.
I opened up the phone and saw that the tiny gold spring contact on the right hand side of the bottom module had broken off. It was likely damaged and was causing the mic issues. The rest of the bottom module’s functionality (vibration, USB, speaker) is fine.
Has this happened to anyone before? Has anyone tried to replace a spring contact on a module by dropping a tiny blob of solder onto either where the spring contact was or onto the silver contact on the display module? If so, what were the results?
I think I once did that in the beginning, thinking that it would fix a rebooting issue I was having. It’s possible, I think I did it with a micropencil, but I don’t know if it’ll fix it. It’s easy to try, so go ahead, but microphone issues are usually the PCB traces or in rare cases the microphone.
Thanks @OldRoutard, I should’ve mentioned Leo right away. I was writing a DM to him about this but then though a public thread might be better, it just didn’t occur to me to ping him in it!
I take it that the spring contact is lost, no possibility of soldering it back on?
It wasn’t lost but I threw it away - it’s so impossibly small and, more importantly, thin that there was zero chance of me soldering it back on.
Thanks @Leo_TheCrafter, I’m a bit more confident about trying it now. I have a replacement module on the way so failure is an option.
microphone issues are usually the PCB traces or in rare cases the microphone
That’s what I would expect too but the microphone always worked, it’s just that there was an incredible amount of noise that drowned the actual mic input out that would go away if I pressed the phone together more which I assume made the damaged spring contact get a better contact with the display module; it only stopped working completely after that spring contact broke.
In this case go ahead. I think I saw one of those spring somewhere at a distributor once, but you have a spare so you don’t need that. If it becomes a more common issue I might look into sourcing some.
