It’s a long story, but I have a fairly new Nexus 5 that is out of warranty and seems to have a power button issue. It looks like the best route for me is to replace it myself… or even better with some help. I’ve soldered wires together, but not circuit boards and not this small. This guide looks like the process I need to follow, but I’d like to see if anyone with experience working on this sort of thing would be able to help me out with the soldering part. I will be ever so grateful, I can reward you in beer or design help!
If you’re around on Saturday, I can help you out. I’ll bring my good SMT equipment, too. Sadly, the electronics room’s stuff just won’t cut it for something like that.
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Cool, thanks! I do need to order a new button though, so that would take a few days for delivery.
I did talk to a local cell repair place and they estimated $65 for repair (button is like $4 for a lot of 4, 15 minute estimate from them). I’m thinking I may just do that since they warranty their work… what do you think?
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That seems like a reasonable deal.
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I would be dubious if they quoted you 15 minutes for the repair. I had a friend who went to someone who was advertising Ipad screen replacement cheap and “at your location”…they didn’t know what they were doing and it ended up taking several days before they were able to repair the Ipad. If this person is quoting you 15 minutes, they may not know what they are doing because it would take 15 minutes to open and close the phone, not taking into account the actual repair time. Be careful. But $65 for a repair from a competent individual sounds decent enough to me.
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Ehh, I think it’s reasonable. The Nexus 5 looks easy to open
and soldering a single button is not a big ordeal if you’re skilled at SMD rework. Hell, I just reconstructed torn-off traces for a micro-usb port on a tablet that had gotten ripped off the PCB and that only took me an hour.
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Thanks guys. Another shop just quoted me $50 + tax, may go with that. The teardown of the Nexus 5 did look pretty straight forward, hence why I was willing to give it a go. But I think at those prices I’m willing to let someone else handle it and not make my phone my personal learning experience.