SUBSIM mobile phone thread

[Rockin Robbins]

My latest cell phone astrophotography effort. It's a mixed bag. But on the whole a much better image on a much better night.

[Rockin Robbins]

And here's a new cell phone photo of the Cassiopeia area. Can you find the constellation Cassiopeia in this Milky Way mess of stars? This is a fricking huge area of sky from the top of Cygnus at upper left to Cepheus, Cassiopeia, a chunk of Perseus...yikes! Imagine seeing this with your naked eye. You could from the deck of a submarine in the Pacific ocean.

[CaptainRamius]

Been using a Samsung Galaxy S3 mini. Perfect for what I use it for (Whatsapp, phone calls)
No other apps whatsoever

[HunterICX]

Recently purchased a Huawei P8 Lite for 177€ (unlocked)
Being faster (2gb Ram), has 16gb storage space and at least has a decent camera for taking pictures while on the road.

[Onkel Neal]

Huawei is a fast growing company.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yay for the little guys duking it out with the bruisers! Competition is good for everyone except for those who don't compete.

[Onkel Neal]

Ugh, my LG G3 has developed some kind of hardware issue. The display has a curtain of lines and bars and overall is hard to read (similar to the video below). Man, not happy. I've had this phone 2+ years but I am not ready to sink more $$ into a new one. Very disappointed in LG.

[Onkel Neal]

I'm gonna try this fix, pray for me

[v-i-c-]

There are several videos about how to fix this problem. I think you should watch them all and read the comments before you start trying to fix it. Some reflow the chip with high temperature:

[Onkel Neal]

Aye vic, good idea. I plan to study up and then attack this phone tomorrow, so I'll have the whole weekend to grieve if I kill it. I don't have a heat gun so I'll stick it in the microwave for a minute.

I just hate trashing things if there is a way to repair them and get more life out of them. I guess that's the Gamer in me, squeezing resources. These phones are ultra cool mini computers, it makes me cringe to think about throwing it away without trying to repair it.

If the phone surgery does kill the patient, I am going to buy a Moto G4 or G5. I no longer live on the road so I really don't need a high end mini computer... er, mobile phone. I just need something that will make calls, take pics, run Google Maps, and tether my laptop. If I buy a phone outright I do not have to have a contract with the carrier.

[propbeanie]

I did an HP laptop motherboard like that several times. It worked the first two times quite well. I got another year and a half the first time, and almost a year the second time. After that, I couldn't bring it back. Phones probably are more finicky about temperature and the bake-time length, so definitely watch all the videos you can find, but you're still at the mercy of your own decision. You want to use a combination that gets the motherboard hot enough for a long enough duration of time, to melt the solder and re-flow it (a "natural" process), but not so long as to have the solder fall off the joints, or melt parts that may be "delicate". I'm certain that you'll have to make some "foil hats" to protect some areas of the board and / or chips... Good luck!

[Rockin Robbins]

You know, I'm a bit burned out on slightly less than $1000 (and soon to be over that) flagship phones. My daughter bought an Honor 5 and absolutely loves the thing. Their new Huawei Honor 8 is darned good, within spitting distance of an $800 cell phone for $270.

About the only thing not to like is short battery life.....sorta like my LG G4. But I really don't care much until the hurricane strikes. Then I can keep the battery charged but I know there won't be any cell phone service.

Unfortunately, I'm very experienced dealing with these hurricanes and know I'll survive but also know it won't be fun. Losing communication is the worst part about these things.

Hint for those in the path: what drains your battery in three hours when under normal use you have ten or twelve solid hours from a single charge? NOTHING other than navigation services drains your battery faster than your phone looking for a connection and not finding one. After the storm, if you don't have service, put your phone in airplane mode. Once in awhile take the phone out of airplane mode long enough to search for service and if you don't have it, put that phone right back into airplane mode. You'll find that your batteries will now last a little LONGER than they normally would instead of about a third as long as normal.

[Onkel Neal]

Well, I tried several "fixes", I added the paper wedge, did not help. I baked the motherboard for 8 minutes at 350F, twice, nothing helped. Alas.

Went to Best Buy and got a Moto G5 Plus. I asked several questions about using the charger from my old phone, was it compatible, what kind of data/charger port did the new phone have, if the phone I was buying was the same, etc. I specifically asked if all I had to do was remove the sim card from my old phone and put it in the new phone. I was told yes, sure. The associate should have picked up on my concerns about changing phones; when I got home I learned the new phone uses a mini sim card, so the old sim card won't work. I will have to go back to the store and see if they can make a new sim card with my old data. I could have gone to Wal-Mart and gotten this kind of service.

[propbeanie]

Sorry 'bout both of your experiences Onkel Neal. The baking doesn't always work, but the store?... Seems that a lot of places have the incompetency issue. I had to "update" my dum-dum fone (the only kind I'm qualified to operate), since AT&T was shutting down their 2G service, and my flip fone was going to obsolete. I'd had that Motorola Razer since the day I got a cell fone... alas, progress marches on, and I had to change sim cards. Then they screw up the little amount of data you ~do~ have on your sim card. I've lost all of my music, my ring tones, my text messages, and I've now got 400 contact entries instead of 100... Everybody quadrupled when the girl at the store "set me up"... - and I still can't figure out how to operate the beast, like mute the dad-blamed thing when I go into places, so I have to turn it off...

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Went to Best Buy and got a Moto G5 Plus. I asked several questions about using the charger from my old phone, was it compatible, what kind of data/charger port did the new phone have, if the phone I was buying was the same, etc. I specifically asked if all I had to do was remove the sim card from my old phone and put it in the new phone. I was told yes, sure.

I'm sure he picked up on it. He just wanted to sell you the phone. Best Buy is off my buy list. I've repaired lots of computers that were totally screwed up by their Geek Squad. And so many times Geek Squad does the quick and dirty "screw their data" repair and the customer loses everything they went to Geek Squad to save. They have a working soulless husk of a computer. If they're lucky.