Just a little story of something that just happened to me. I was plugging in my phone for its night of suckling at the teat of the power grid, when I heard a sickening “snick.” The phone charger wouldn’t fit into the phone any more, seems a little chunk had broken off in there.

“Damn it!”

First I thought, maybe something is loose, so I wiggled the part, and yup it was loose, too loose. The damn thing was so fragile that one wrong push and it snapped off.

I thought about how much it would cost to get a new phone, and the hassle, and environmental damage and said “fuck this if it is busted at least I can try to fix it.”

I had a little screw driver used to fix glasses that allowed me to open the phone. Once inside I saw the problem. The part of the phone that connects to the charger was a super fragile little web of soldered wires. The part that has to hold the most stress was built as fragile as a feather.

I got out my soldering iron, and a pair of tweezers and CAREFULLY placed the wires over the place they used to be attached, hoping that there would be enough solder on the board to reattach the part.

Careful not to apply too much heat and melt the other tiny ass components (there is no doubt in my mind that some very fancy robot/small children built the insides of my phone as it is very compact in there) I applied heat to each of the 20 some lead, until each one was soldered to the board.

The moment of truth, phone snapped back together, screws put back in, battery snapped in, power button pushed…so far so good the phone turned on.

The real test would come however when I plugged the power charger cord in, would the phone recognize that it was plugged in….SUCCESS! It worked! I fixed my phone, a phone I have had for 3 or so years now, a phone that I have repainted when the paint peeled off the outside, the phone that survived several bike crashes, and now the phone that has survived it’s own poor design.

Never give up, don’t throw it away until you have at least tried to fix it. Don’t be afraid to get in there and mess stuff up, I mean if it is already broken, you can’t make it worse, you might even get lucky and fix it.