yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[HD2 General] motoi_bogdan:
the mica crystal pads should be available at any electronic components store. If you can't find any, you could try to substitute them with any other similar purpose material. Use only thermal pads used in electronics for semiconductor (transistors mostly) thermal dissipation. However from what i know or can test, the mica ones are superior to other designs or materials.

Also, good quality thermal paste is a MUST. Cheap one tend to dry out or loose effectiveness over time.

@ profahmad - yes, the back of the lcd unit is metallic. Normally it was not intended to provide heat dissipation, neither is in direct contact with the heat making components, but it takes some of the heat and spreads it over it's surface. What i did is to forcefully use this piece of metal along with the materials i used for the "heat sync" in order to facilitate better thermal dissipation. The HD2 is build on the "edge" as you can see, even if the display unit is removed or improperly mounted, the small effect in cooling the board it once had is enough now to provoke some of the thermal issues.

@januszgorlewski reheating is very risky without solid previous experience. Simply reheating the cpu didn't solve the problem for me, it only ameliorated it a bit. The new heat sync did the trick so i suspect you can skip reheating with not much of a loss in effectiveness. However i should have experienced with more devices in order to know for sure the effects of each stage of my experiment.

@sqeeza yes, a petition could be filed out. However, there are 20-30 topics in this area about hd2 freezing or restarting but most people don't know there is a thermal problem related with these events. If we advertise the problem and it's cause to these people they could run some simple test to determine if their phones are also suffering from this problem.
[HD2 General] I want a hamburger:
i heard the HD2 was good

but good to eat........... :P
[HD2 General] ubejd:
sorry to hear that :(

I hope you solved your problem.

To turn on your phone just connect with pc - usb.

Finally make some tests like play a game or video.
[HD2 General] jjollyroger:
forget about hardware buttons, look here
[HD2 General] DTNT:
Thanks a lot my friend. But dont you have some links for Android OS? Because my HD2 runs in Android and I dont want go back to WinMO6.5. :)
[HD2 General] motoi_bogdan:
there was a piece of software that placed those hardware buttons on the screen so you could simply tap them. I forgot how it was named, found it here, over xda developers.

DTNT, aside from the broken buttons, does your phone work normally now, after reheating?
[HD2 General] ASCIIker:
if you are talking about an on-screen button app for android, "button savior" comes to mind...
[HD2 General] DTNT:
Let me describe the process I have done.

I preheated gaz oven to 240C without motherboard inside. Than waited (decreased gaz) temperature to be stabilized in 225C as booze_pistol described. But oven went to 200C. I thought that it will be ok and put chip inside on top of the ceramic cup processor-on-top way. I held chip in 200C 10 minutes and 5 minutes in 230C. I didnt/willnot have temperature probes, so I guessed with the time. Total time spent in gaz-oven was 15 minutes. Motherboard was without metal covers on it, I took them off as Facdemol said. After cooking, I assembled device. Turn it on only with USB connection (Android onboard) due to I torn off hard buttons bus :). But infortunately device still have the previous problems. Besides LED while charging is not liteon and at startup (stick togather) there is no vibration.

In this experiment I found several discoveries.

1. Chip can bear more temperatures than 225-230C

2. No demages or burns after heating on the motherboard

3. Assembling is harder than disasembling :)

4. Be careful with bus connections (white ones) they are can easily be demaged with the bus.

For this week that is all. Will try to cook later this weekend. In more high temps. I hope there will be progress! Inshallah!!!
[HD2 General] ubejd:
well... sorry to hear that my bro :( , you will need to do it again and i believe you will succeed, i had to make it twice too even using professional equipment.

those discoveries are true :D... inshAllah you will.
[HD2 General] joshkane:
Thank For All The Info! Your The Man!
[HD2 General] dekser15:
:confused:

Recently I tried to reflow 2 main boards from HTC HD2. It was before I read this thread. I used the heat gun with a small nozzle and infrared thermometer. I couldn't reach 210 C on the chip so I took the nozzle too close to the top of the chip. And on the surface of the chips appeared a small blister and a crack on one and a crack on another.The boards don't work now. Could you help me please? Could you advise if I should reheat them again or put accurately in the bin?
[HD2 General] motoi_bogdan:
well, generally speaking the nozzle size should be adapted to the chip size when doing heat desoldering. So if you were to try heating up a big chip you would need a bigger nozzle size. This is because a small nozzle will heat up only a small portion of the chip at once and since that part is more hotter it will tend to expand more due to dilatation then the other cooler parts. Because of this, the ceramic overstructure of the chip can break/crack due to mechanical stress, even if you don't actually touch the chip itself. If you look at videos of reflowing or smt soldering you'll see people constantly moving the nozzle tip around the chip. This is done to prevent exactly these type of problems in an attempt to heat up the chips evenly.

In your case, a portion of the chip itself has cracked due to the above reason. I cannot say if the electronic part of the chip, it's core, has been damaged but if there is even a small similarity with the ti arm cpu's or samsung s3c cpu's i've dissected in the past, most probably your chip has died out due to the fact that the mechanical stress also got the small tracks inside the chip broken. The core itself is very small, about the size of a single rice bob but connecting to it, are about 200 small tracks that extend to the surface of the chip and connects the core with all of the underneath terminal pins. Some of those have been broken, most probably.

You can try reheating again, but i guess there's a small chance it will ever come back alive and if i'm right about the cpu damage, it will...really stay...dead.

I'm sorry to hear that, i myself was pretty upset back when i was failing soldering jobs and killing stuff in the process. Practice makes it perfect, but it takes some hell of of a lot years (and i still managed to kill one hd2 myself).
[HD2 General] dekser15:
:)Thank you very much for your respond facdemol. The nozzle was around 10mm in diameter and I was constantly moving it around the chip. In the beginning I kept the nozzle above the chip on the distance around 50-70mm with minimal flow. The temperature rose to 150 C and didn't rise higher. So I took the nozzle closer(10 -15mm) and kept moving it around the chip until this happen.

Not sure if it's possible to test the chip same how.:cool:
[HD2 General] DTNT:
Experiment #2. Results

As you remember I had the same problem in my HD2 after my first cooking. Well, yesterday I againt tried to heat chip. My first attempt in my #2 experiment is: I preheted gazoven to 250 C degree and kept the chip (chip upside) for 15 minutes. After I reassembled phone, but only black screen with low backlite came as a result. I thought I burned chip, but after 1-2 times with switching on by deattaching battery, device woke up with 'stick togather' splash screen, than went to MAGDLR boot and froze on GO GO GO. Ok, I wa very happy for this result, and thought to cool down chip and let it stay on shelf for a while. Well after again reassemble device, but again froze on go go go.

After, I decided to cook, as Facdemol advices, with chip DOWN and than UP. I heated oven to 200C and hold the chip processor down for 10 minutes and than processor up in 250-270C for 15 minutes. No any demages became with the parts of the chip. But again I tried to switch on the device. And this time it is not switching on :))). But the right bottom side (if you face device with screen to yourself) is getting very hot. But no heat from processor. Before I switched on device without backcover and can touch chip, it was heating.

First, I think I burned the chip, second, maybe system needs more time to wake up (I plugged in charger for a 10-15 secs only), third, battery is almost empty and cannot startup device, fourth, if device will not wake up I probably send it to Facdemol for further experiments and for more successful resluts. Fifth, despite of all this headaches, I will never switch to another brand but HTC :)

Good luck everybody. I will come with final results tomoroow. Inshallah!!!
[HD2 General] DTNT:
Experiment #2. Final Results

I did all, hold charger for a 4-5 minutes, reviewed all buses for connection error and etc. So, when I plug in charger bottom of the right side of the device is heating (where screen sensor bus plugged in), and very little heat coming from processor.

Now I know that my device is dead :) I bought it as present for myself when my second son was born :) Hard to throw away my HD2, but I have to.

@Facdemol, if it is possible, please send me your adress as private message, I will try to send device via DHL. Maybe it will help you in next experiments.

But my experience should not be as a barrier for other to do experiments on heating of their devices. Just try it. Maybe you will be successful.
[HD2 General] atjong1:
I had the freeze problems when room temperatures reached to around 22 degrees Celcius and usually while charging my HD2. Just about any processor usage (angrybirds, music playback, navigation) would lockup the phone and removing the battery would be the only remedy. I called around and one telephone repair shop here in the Netherlands had a HD2 with a broken screen. I asked him to transplant the motherboard into my HD2. He did so, complained about a previous repair (by Vodafone) that had been done sloppy, charged me 60 euros for the used parts plus 30 euros for the labour and now my HD2 is functioning perfectly!

I installed the Android tool StabilityTest and let it run for an hour. The lower back part of the phone got hot but it ran an kept running. It's the 2nd day after the transplant now and I haven't had 1 single freeze, even when running everything at once (navigation, internet radio via, bluetooth). I'm happy :).

Facdemol, the repair shop handed me a small bag with all the old parts from my phone. I would be happy to send them you if you would like to have them for your experiments. Just PM me. I think it's small enough to be sent in an envelope.
[HD2 General] true2you:
Hello guys, this is my first post here, i'm not going to bother you much (i hope) : Can anyone advise me on how to remove the aluminum protection which covers the processor. Is there a specific way or should i just go whith lots of pressure & muscle?

EDIT : Here's my feedback!!

It's a sad day, as i did all the steps (thermal grease -white one, not grey- lots of foil ...etc) + in the OVEN for about 5min at 150°C / then 30min wait / then 10min at 230°C, i managed to handle the heat problem (no freezes).. But I had a lot of losses...

-hardware keys (seems i forgot to remove the cable before removing the motherboard) (i guess i can find the spare part though)

-Also, something terrible, i messed up the 3 bottom screws (mainboard screws) and I can't remove them anymore (large cable went off.. oops, can't put it back in)

STRESS TEST : Since the device is on the stock winMo (and hardware keys don't work so can't flash & try xbox ive games under wp7) , i stress tested it with ELECTOPIA game and fpsCE (playstation emulator)... More than 1hour of test and no crash, even if it got pretty hot (i could sense it getting hotter than usual without any probles.

For the screws, do you guys think i'm screwed? I was thinking to go to a shop for some solution.
[HD2 General] the_scotsman:
The metal cover just prises off. Use a small thin screwdriver to prise it up, it's quite easy, and you wont damage it.

I just used a temperature controlled heatgun to fix my HD2 and it worked! Set it to 220 and held it over the chip for a few minutes, but this didn't seem to work. So bumped it up to 232 and held it over the chip for a few minutes, and now the phone seems to work. Though now the touchscreen stopped working. not sure if it's something on the mainboard or the touchscreen itself yet.
[HD2 General] fun321:
My overheating experience...

I have the same overheating problem as many others here. Frequent reboots when the HD2 gets more than lukewarm.

Then it goes into a reboot cycle, sometimes also has the 7 beeps at reboot. ONE QUESTION HERE: When the phone reboots and the speaker is in use at the time this happens, then there is first a very loud and long nasty tone on the speakers while the phone is frozen and THEN the reboot happens. Is this the same behavior that others had with temperature-related reboots, or is my phone unusual in this regard? Please let me know if anyone else had this experience, since nobody here has mentioned this loud tone before....

To "fix" the reboot problem, I first tried the heat sink solution, which delayed the reboots somewhat, but the "effect" was hardly noticeable.

Then I used the reheat method, using two k-type thermoprobes (one above one below the CPU), so I figure the board temp is somewhere in between the 2 probe readings. First preheated on an electric hotplate to about 180C, then heated the CPU with a heat-gun until it reached about 220C. Reassembled and at least it still worked. I viewed a long Youtube video, and after 10 minutes it rebooted again. Dang.

Then I repeated the reheat method. Again, preheated until about 180C, then used the heatgun, and this time went to 235C on CPU side (the underside reached about 215C). Then reassembled, and the phone stayed dead and dark. Dang, and dang again!!!

Sad really.

Maybe I'll try another re-heat, in the hope that somehow it will fix it, but I am doubtful.

I have 3 HD2 phones, all off-warranty. All have the reboot problem. One is shot now. I don't know if I should try "fixing" the others, since at least they still work if I put them in the fridge or on the air-conditioning.

I am seriously angry with HTC to produce such $/&/&$§. Seriously! :( :(

My ROM: Kumar_s_Touch_Premium_V4.1_29007_CHT1.8.5_WWE

with Radio: 2_12_50_02_2
[HD2 General] atjong1:
Yes, I've had that tone. Sometimes the tone came from the speaker (but not very often) en sometimes the tone was heard by the party that I was calling (almost every time).
[HD2 General] fun321:
Some more info about my failed CPU-frying...

(First off, thanks for the info about the long nasty speaker tone just before a phone reboots due to overheating. It's good to know that others had experienced this long tone, too)

Some more info about my re-heating experiment: I forgot to mention in my last post that after the failed CPU-frying (i.e., after the second re-heating, when the phone would stay dead and dark), it did nothing when switched on while the battery was in, but IT GOT REALLY HOT at the back when I plugged it into the recharger. I don't know what this means. Maybe a short circuit inside at the CPU-board solder level?

Since I had nothing left to lose, I re-heated the CPU once again (3rd try), this time in a very unconventional way: I manufactured a rectangular piece of brass just about the size of the CPU and about 5mm thick. Then I put the brass piece on an electric stove plate, and placed the CPU with board upside-down just exactly onto the brass piece. This means that the CPU was upside-down this time. I would say that the whole thing was horizontal, since the board balances well when it's rested on the CPU.

This time I did not place any k-type probe on the board (it was too unstable as it was resting on the brass piece), but decided to just measure the stove plate directly. I heat up the stove plate to about 260C and then switched it off and let it cool down. I guess that with the temperature gradient through the brass plate and through the CPU, the temperature at solder level would be about 230C, but cannot be sure about that.

In short, it did not work. The CPU acted just as before (phone dead and dark, nothing happens when switched on, but getting hot at the back when plugged into the charger). What's more, the CPU GOT A CRACK during this last re-heating. I assume that this is because the CPU got heated up much faster through the brass plate than the rest of the board (which was basically floating about 4mm above the stove plate). The thermal difference might have caused some stresses and cracked the CPU. (Note to self: I could have heated up the stove plate much more slowly - but I did not expect this cracking-problem, so I stupidly used the highest heating power immediately from the start).

Anyway, I have given up on this mainboard :mad:. I might try to find a replacement board, but I am currently in Europe and can only get Europe-HD2 boards, while the destroyed HD2 is a TMOUS model. No idea if putting a Europe board in the TMOUS would work (does anybody here know this?), but if I find a cheap one, I'll try. ;)

I still have 2 other HD2 that exhibit the reboot problems (One Europe-Leo and one TMOUS-Leo). Not decided yet what I will do with it. I don't want to fry over $1000 worth of phones. Shame on HTC. :(
[HD2 General] fun321:
Snapdragon devices...

I googled some more, and it seems that Snapdragon devices indeed are VERY prone to this overheating problem.

Some guy has noticed the same thing on the Snapdragon-powered Sony-Ericsson XPERIA X10 about 9 months ago, and ,amazingly, he also identified the BGA-matrix as the likely culprit! Check this out, it's scary HOW MANY people seem to be affected (and stressed out) by this hardware issue, and this is the X10 thread alone:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=35313373389&topic=20709

Even more disturbing is the huge number of people who have the same problem with their Desire, Evo, HD2, Droid Incredible, Galaxy S etc, and are shooting in the dark about this, re-installing and re-re-installing different software in the hope the problem might somehow go away -- but doesn't. Sad....

I have just added this to the list of issues of the HD2 on Wikipedia, as well as to the list of issues of the Snapdragon on Wikipedia. Just google "HD2 wiki", or "Snapdragon wiki", and check it out. :rolleyes:

I'm sure this spreading of information won't help us fix it, and probably won't even make HTC care about this. (Unfortunately for us, only careful "cooking" at the right temperature will fix it, with a lot of luck thrown in!). But this will, at least, alert others to the real cause of this reboot-cycle overheating problem, and stop them from wasting their time looking for software fixes.
[HD2 General] anhyeuemmaimai:
been using the phone for over 1 year now and had it lock maybe 10 times..since I replaced the SD card I have had it lock up a lot less mayne 3 times since then. When it stops I just remove the "phone condom" and pull the battery and put it back in.

All of the times that the phone has given me trouble is when I was also charging it.
[HD2 General] apalileo:
This was a very interesting and informative post!

A few months ago my HD2's digitizer became unresponsive and I found someone on craigslist selling theirs for $80 because "it just stopped working". I bargained and bought it for $30. I swapped over the digitizer from his to mine and all was good!

Next, out of curiosity I reassembled the other phone with my unresponsive digitizer and powered it on... and it worked! I thought I had scored a good phone for $30 with MADLDR, CWM and a Froyo ROM already installed! However, after it sat for about 20 minutes I noticed it got hot and then it shut down. After that it wouldn't get past the MAGLDR screen.

I read this thread after searching about thermal issues and tried putting the phone in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Pulled the cold phone out, hit the power button and voila! Working again! I let it sit on my desk in front of my air conditioner and removed the battery cover. With these conditions I managed to keep it up and running for almost an hour. Since the digitizer doesn't do anything I couldn't guage anything so it's all based on phone idle as far as I know. I don't know what exact ROM is installed, what apps are on it or anything like that. So once this all gets sorted out I just might pursue fixing this phone and having TWO HD2's!

Just my two cents. Peace.
[HD2 General] apalileo:
P.s. This also reminds me of the issue I had with my "first release" fat PS3. Mine showed the "Yellow Light of Death" (YLOD) and after researching my brother and I ended up disassembling it and heating the processors with a heating gun, applying fresh Arctic Silver to the heat sinks and as a result we're still COD'ing up to this day!
[HD2 General] atjong1:
Yes thats the one. Be prepared for when it gets worse...
[HD2 General] anhyeuemmaimai:
I would guess that having the phone in the rubber casing is not helping. I have had my phone for about a year now and other than those times mentioned, have not had any troubles. This leads me to believe that it is best to charge the phone outside of the rubber....... It's easy to slide it off phone the phone is connected.
[HD2 General] fun321:
I also had the impression that the rubber glove makes the problem (marginally) worse, possibly because it acts as a thermal insulator and thus allows even less heat transfer away from the phone. That being said - I think the effect is quite marginal, if the overheating problem is already present, then even permanently removing the glove will never fix it.
[HD2 General] Niendertal:
Temperature vs warranty

Like facdemol I like very much the HD2 phone and I was waiting the opportunity to have one. The phone is new (2011) and I am having problems related to temperature.

Examples of my problem:

Same times if the phone runs out of battery it takes me like 30 minutes to start the phone.

Everyday the phone hangs and the white screen with HTC logo freezes. In these cases the phone begins to overheat and I must turn off the phone and wait 30 minutes to begin trying the battle of starting the phone again with all the vibrating issues.

Sometimes the phone freezes and restarts just because it’s connected to Active Sync.

And there are other times that the phone just hangs because I am exploring the applications of the phone... like camera, files or menus.

MY QUESTION IS:

CAN I HAVE A REPLACE PHONE SINCE THIS IS STILL IN WARRANTY PERIOD?
[HD2 General] ubejd:
well my bro thats what you should do immediately ... go and replace your phone
[HD2 General] atjong1:
Why ask this question here? You should go back to the place you bought it and ask (demand) for it to get fixed. It looks like you have a very bad case of this problem.
[HD2 General] Misternumz:
BGA repaired solution

I rewelded an USB Wifi stick, using only a weller iron ! It's a good solution to use a ball of weld and expose all the surface with this ball during the time of fusion, then apply a little presure to the processor ! That sure hot air is the best, but sometimes the tools are missing ;) Great work ! And well done, you confirmed that heating problems came frome the BGA ;)

( Sorry for my English !):D
[HD2 General] FabyXXX:
facdemol, I have the same problems with my hd2 right now. I just bought it from a site and the phone had this problem since I got it. I can't do anything now because the seller is just saying that I wrecked it and it was all good when he had the phone.

Whatever, what I'm trying to say is that I'm romanian just like you and I would like to ask you if I can send my phone to you to have it fixed. I'll pay how much you want. Just leave me an yahoo mail or messenger adress to talk. Thank you
[HD2 General] jcsy:
my warranty service is looking bleak and dim, so im going to pursue the FREEZER trick. going to freeze it for 30 minutes and see whether it works after that