Cell Ringer is GO

Several months ago when it became annoyingly clear that my 2 year old “Razr” phone was slowly dying I picked up a cheap out of contract Motorola E815 on eBay to replace it- I’ve been impressed with the phone, it gets excellent reception and battery life and I really enjoyed putting goofy MP3 ringtones on it after I did the SEEM hack to allow copying to and from removable memory.

I’ve had a couple of problems, though. First, I blew the ring speaker out. Seriously- the ringer was reduced to a nearly inaudible scratchy whisper. I think the mylar cone delaminated from the voice coil- probably while playing one of my more raucous ringtones. And- recently I noticed that the plastic case parts around the antenna have cracked. The antenna protrudes about an inch and gets plenty of abuse in my pocket- but it’s not designed with very good support. Now the antenna has some play in it.

Cut to the chase. I fixed the ringer, and I tried to superglue the case back together, but it broke again. If it gets worse I will make it a JB weld cast. About the ringer- I decided tonight to donate the old “Razr” to science:

I pulled its ringer speaker out, and decided to stick it in the E815. The speakers are not quite the same size, it’s not a drop-in fix.

(“Razr” speaker on the right, E815 mainboard, speaker contacts can be seen on the left side of the board, placed diagonally)

I am impressed by the design of the E815, it’s simple and easy to pop it apart and back together, the FFC and connectors are robust and easy to use. I’m not so impressed with the antenna mounting at least it’s easy enough to take apart and put back together.

Since the “Razr” speaker doesn’t actually fit, I hot glued it to the circuit board and cut out some of the plastic bits that kept it from fitting in the bottom case. In doing so I busted one of the little clips off and had to re-solder it. Flux FTW.

It lives!

Now I’ve got my speaker-phone back, and most importantly… my ringtones!