[JAMin, XDA Neo, S200 General] ts70:
Hi everyone.

Seems this forum has at least a couple of people taking their Prophete apart (as I do) and collecting some hardware know-how.

I have two Prophetes (XDA Neos to be correct) with different problems.

I start with the history (how it comes) and will end with what I know know and where I do not get any further currently:

Prophete #1:

5 years old from O2 germany contract, G4 device (Rom versions to be posted on request, device is at home...). Was broken twice (no booting any more) during warranty and the got wet when I was hiking only with a shirt in a thunderstorm. No warranty of course, but device dead ;-( And nobody would repair it - not even for money. Pissed off from O2, but whatever...

So I found here somewhere the Maintenance Manual and disassembled the thing, dried everything and had to buy a new battery and since then it more or less works fine. The battery I was able to re-animate by charging with Laboratory power supply - The Prophete seems to go dead below a certain voltage and does not even try to charge the batt any more...

For a while I had strange illumination effects - screen fixed very bright with one half even brighter and bad color contrast - possible to work, but ugly. This disappeared slowly after 2 more years...

Then I had this well-known dead speaker-thing (dirt in headset socket) - also long time ago repaired.

But now (over the last 2 years, increasing lately a lot) I have this strange scratching noise on the main speaker. It was supposed to be a bad speaker why I bought on ebay a defective second Prophete (to be discussed below) and switched speakers - booth are fine in #2 but scratching in #1. The trick with some cardboard under the speaker cover also does not work reliably and not at all in last months.

What I found last time I took the device apart is: when I leave a finger nail thick gap between the front cover and the housing frame in the lower half of the device, then everything is fine. But that is unsatisfactory to work with a semi-disassambled phone!

I guess, it has to do with some hair-break in a connection on the mainboard or something with the contacts between the different boards (spring contacts for grounding?) or with the headphone socket.

DOES ANYONE HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH THAT SCRATCHING NOISE and can help? Where should I search?

Device #2:

Bought 1 year ago as broken. Has a crack in the touch screen, but the screen responds fine and precise all the way down to < 1mm from the crack. After cleaning the screen and the front cover, the device started to work again (touch was inop. when I got the thing).

WLAN is dead. BT seems to work.

GSM did work fine. So the device got my wifes new mobile phone. And after 3 months it started to refuse contact to any GSM network.

If I search for networks, it lists all the providers around in germany, but when I have it connect to one, it times out. So I think the Radio (GSM) system is still working (at least receiving network names, tuning right frequencies etc.), but not correctly.

I did reflash the radio ROM, but no success so far.

Sometimes after cold boot, the telephone app in general and the settings specifically are very irresponsive (long answer time, complete WM crash, whjatever). Thus I consider reflashing the entire device.

Q:

- what are good radio and WM(best: 6.1 GER) ROMs to try? (No flashing experience so far)

- what are typical GSM and WLAN failure mechanisms of the Prophetes (bad solder points, bad spring contacts etc.) - i.e. where to look?

I could even consider a "make 1 good out of 2 broke" - action - but I am afraid, that booth devices have a somehow mainboard-located problem.

Thanks for any helpful comments!

Torsten