[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
LOL! :laugh:

I was thinking about it. But dude, if you have never lived on disability as a homeowner, your entire life changes. I have to think really hard and justify spending $20 now. There is no more "Oh gotta have it $200 ching!" stuff, anymore.

No, I don't want to spend $100 on an old dog like the XT912, but you know what? I really do like this phone, have learned so much here, and made a LOT of very good friends and met a ton of super decent people. So, I will break down when I get the cash and put in a claim for a factory refurb and be done with it. They send that thing overnight so you get it the very next day.

Also I discovered two "Cannot live without products" by being in here and discussing all things Razr. One issue that always comes up is storage. So, I bought the 64Gb ext-sdcard. This was a very smart purchase because "I can take it with me in the event I get another phone". And storage, is, well, self-explanatory.

The second "Cannot live without products" is my Belkin hands free Bluetooth receiver, again I can "take it with me". I started to love using my phone plugged into AUX jack of car stereo, but the jack is worn out. Static, speakers cutting in and out, it totally sucked! Bluetooth is the only answer. I found the right one and I decided to go buy a real Italian sub to drown my sorrows and put the Belkin through it's paces. In the car, "Okay Google". (Google makes a "ping sound" when it is listening for voice input) Ping, "play music crowded house" and "Don't dream it's over" comes floating out the car stereo as good as it gets. While driving and listening, again "Okay Google" music mutes, ping sound, call mom home. "Calling mom home". I hear ringing at mom's house, she picked up and we have a short chat, totally hands free. Mom hangs up and Crowded House picks right up where it left. Got my sandwich and on the way home, more fun. Getting into car, music resumed. "Okay Google". ping, navigate home. Phone goes right to navigate, no way around that utra-stupid "Google turn on WiFi for navigation" question, tap no. Music resumes and screen is navigating home, while my svox UK Victoria voice gives me turn by turn directions, all the while navigation is clearly visible on the screen. Man, this is T&A served up HOT, bra!

All I need now is a phone holder clip to stick on dash for things like navigation viewing. The phone is not totally ruined, it works fine but no LTE or 4G data. That will be fixed soon enough. So, calm yourself my friend. The Ohmster has no intentions of leaving. It is too much fun in here. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! :laugh:

Additonal commentary

This part is for Brian Hughes because he likes to read my long posts sometimes. The rest of you can stop now, there is really nothing significant below to learn from or help you. See? Even Ohmster has a heart and will tell you when you can skip lengthily stuff and not miss anything! :D For the great majority of you all, this post ends here and now. :good:

Well Brian, since you love my extended posts (And you are not the only one, the others either do not admit it, or joke about it. All in good fun, I realize. There are NO malicious individuals in this thread!), I will go on to say that I really don't mind having to get a refurbished phone as much as I or you might think. I have had the crack in the digitizer for over a year and yes, things like that irritate the heck out of me. It happened to my $400 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, 10.1 and it was bad, real bad. I was about crying over it because it was relatively new. I dropped it on the bed and instead of landing flat, it hit on the corner and bounced and rolled and jumped right off the edge of the bed, slam, right on the tile floor. OMG, what have I done?!! :crying:

I looked it up on Google, found that a new digitizer was really cheap, maybe $15 and came from China. So it may be a while in shipping. And the instructions did not seem "that bad", but it called for a heat gun that I didn't have. Getting my buddy, a TV shop owner to lend me one was near impossible, he wanted me to do the work there so the tool would not leave the shop. The place is a pig sty, not to mention I did not have a nice PC over the bench with decent monitor to view the video and follow the instructions. I had to convince "Vincent" otherwise. So I put my Velerman digital LCD portable oscilloscope up for collateral if he would let me take the gun home. He knew that the 'scope was worth far more than the heat gun and agreed. He didn't even want the leads, just put up the 'scope and take the gun.

The job was not as bad as I thought. Heat the back, wedge in a guitar pick and move all around, get the spudger (Included in the digitizer kit.) in the crack and gently remove the back cover. Once open, carefully flip up a couple of ribbon cable latches and pull the ribbon cables. Getting the top separated from the board and chassis was not that bad either. Replace the digitizer, and reassemble backwards. Piece of cake and I was SO proud of myself! Vince got his heat gun back and I got my 'scope back.

The second time I broke the digitizer on the tablet, it was much worse. All but shattered and although still usable, you would cut your finger on the shards of glass. This time, I did not bother with Vince and all his crap so I used my 1,600 watt hair dryer, worked just as good and replaced the digitizer again, a perfect job!

This gave me all the courage I needed to order and replace the digitizer on the phone. OMG, what a mistake that turned out to be. Mind you, I am a 30+ year electronic technician and work on miniature parts and boards regularly. But this was simply too much for too little. I got it open, could NOT disconnect the batter because the terminals were not visible when back was removed, at all! Not like the video. Maybe the terminals were on the other side. I will not work on a live board like this, the chance of shorting something is extremely high and a risk I was not willing to take. So, I started to remove the chassis from the front cover. The camera bezel/decal stared to tear and no, I did not have a replacement here. Then the super miniature Torx screws. Size 3 I believe, did not have them either. Also the antenna wires were super thin and if not super careful, would tear from the back cover. I know when NOT to continue and if ever there was a time, this was it.

Yes, I could now order the decal/bezel for the camera and could now order the T3 screwdriver I needed, but, after so many years working as an employed electronic tech, I learned when NOT to work jobs and to back away from them because they were not cost effective, the part and/or labor would exceed any sort of profit we could ever make, and the job was a total loser. Even for me. If I were to work on something I am good at. PC repair, network setup/admin, website design and publish, even electrician work, I would have made enough money to buy 3 or more XT912 units by the time I successfully repaired this phone, if I could do it at all. So, it was a "no go".

Getting a factory refurbished unit would be nice. Not only does everything work, I get a nice exterior unit, not banged up or cracked, totally checked and meets all factory specs, and would be worth it. Not to mention my LTE/4G again. The moral of the story here is to stick with what you are good at. Make money doing what I do best and just pay someone else to do what they do best, refurbish phones. In the end, it is a win/win solution every time. Mind you, if I worked in a shop as a phone tech with all parts on hand and all the modern tools to make the job simple, I could and would have done it myself. But that was not an option. So, I will get the refurbished unit, root it, and restore my fresh backups. Nice and easy. Micheal will help if the new blur rom cannot be rooted with Razr Blade. He did mention the name of the new rooter for Motorola devices, but I forget what it is now. No matter, we are personal friends and I have nothing to worry about. So you see my friend, I am not likely to quit this thread anytime soon. Besides, I am having an absolute pee-in-my-pants good time with my super ext-sdcard and especially my hands free Belkin Bluetooth device. Now it is like driving a new car with the fancy navigation screen and audio, all hands free stuff I never had before. Who knows, maybe I will mount a larger LCD screen to my dash and connect it to my XT912 so that it is really nice. Food for thought, not sure if it is practical but it would be nice. In the auto parts store they do have backup cams in full color with screen and they are reasonable to buy and install. Maybe a way to integrate the phone into that. Wow, would that ever be cool! But for now, just dreaming *that* far ahead. ;)

One more thing since I am just talking. (Ohmster is very good at that, if you hadn't noticed.) :D

Google Hangouts is one grossly under-rated app!

I never used Skype that much for video chatting. Not everyone had it and the hassle of intrusion for a video call when you are not dressed made it pretty useless. But Hangouts is a totally new animal to join the circus. It does your text, SMS & MMS. It does phone calls to land lines or cellphones w/out a Google account. It does audio like any telephone and it does video conferencing, the best I've ever seen and it is totally free! It comes with just about any Android device there is. The only part where I feel that Google could have done better is using it on a PC. You must use Chrome and install the audio plugin. And, it is not the easiest thing to locate and start since you have to navigate Google + and it is in that menu where you will find it. To get calls or anything on a PC, you must run Chrome constantly. Now I don't know about you but Chrome is NOT my favorite browser. That distinction goes to Firefox, with all of the available plugins and extensions, it rates tops in my book and is always running. However, Hangouts capability in all that it does is quite superior to anything else I've tried. I will still use Go SMS Pro for my texting, but I am leaning hard to Hangouts, especially for anything else. I made calls to phones w/out Google like mom's house phone and video conferences all the way from Florida to Nuremberg and I am amazed at the ease of use and the super quality it offers. Ask Emil, [MENTION=5685307]ef141[/MENTION]. He is the first person I tried video chatting with and we do it more often now. Only thing I learned is to text first before making a video call. Many times people are not "ready" for video chats so I always ask in a text about that, first. For any of you that have not tried all the features of Google Hangouts, what are you waiting for? A cinder block to fall on your head or a red carpet to roll out before your feet? Neither one is going to happen so get with the program and live for today! :D