I’m completely out of time, but I gotta tell you about this one.

My touchscreen adventures with w960

As I remember I got w960 in February last year. I really take great care of this phone, but touchscreen stopped working twice already in this as some might say short period of time. I’m one of them btw.

First time it stopped working I was sitting in a chair which FYI was incredibly low, I dropped out of my hand, it hit the floor (with some sort of rug on it). My colleague at the time is driving us home from work, rain is … ballistic, insane trash containers are on the streets, aaah mayhem!

I grab my phone to take few pictures or something, touchscreen is not reacting … I restart it, it’s still not working. We’re going through this lake, car is about to stop running. Ok now I hard restart, nah still not working. I curse and swear at it for the rest of the way back home and keep threatening it that I’ll switch to Nokia.

Find a solution

I think about going to Zagreb or Belgrade just for few hours and go to official Sony Ericsson centre to have it fixed within half an hour. It’s a long story but my w960’s hometown is Wien, you can’t even buy in Bosnia. Nevertheless, after contacting Sony Ericsson in Zagreb, they give me this company in Mostar (I won’t name anyone) and that they’ll handle it just fine. I send it to them, they had to order stuff from Zagreb, cuz as the “boss” said, this phone is a collectors item. Yeepee.

Boring stuff, anyways it took them 4+ weeks to fix it, I can’t even remember how much did it cost, I get extra battery, got “new touchscreen” which was apparently busted. Heh, they even gave me “free” earphones with it, which were ok, except they were earphones for Sony Ericsson z310Ok. You gotta pay for it, it’s not official Sony Ericsson, you can’t have it under warranty. But it’s all fine as long as it’s working, ou yea, they flashed it with “original” firmware. For those who didn’t know I’m a bleeding edge/update freak.

Fine and as long as it’s working, which it is. Great.

Touchscreen is not working again.

Believe it or not, it was killing me, but I didn’t upgrade firmware since they gave it back to me. This screen just stopped working, and when touchscreen is not working, nothings working. Since my awesome experiences with customer service, please also note local thinkpad support as well, fast as a flash my idea was to fix it myself.

I tell my wigga “change” to get actual lcd touchscreen from ebay.at, and this casing which was not needed, but I have this habit of spending extra cash without reason, so yea it’s all cool. I say I’ll replace it myself, for 75euros (which how much it all costs on ebay). And most important of all, I won’t have to wait forever until they do it.

For a minute I even pause, doubting myself if that’s it, if I have made right diagnosis … fsck it, no nuts, no glory,

How to fix your w960 touchscreen

First thing first

I flash it, first I was about to use xs++, but in last minute I change my mind and go for SEUS, I really don’t know why but somehow I’m personally attached to it. Flash it, still nothing.

I get myself a set of torx screwdrivers and a really sharp knife

I figure I’m gonna open it, really out of curiosity, and just so I know what I’m gonna see when I open it to replace the lcd. “Back” thoughts were to acknowledge my thesis that the screen is dead.

Unscrew, the two torx screws.

Use fingernails/screwdriver do detach upper lid

Now, unscrew two more torx screws, and I mentioned sharp knife earlier on, it wasn’t for stabbing anyone, duh :) Use it to unscrew incredibly tiny screw


Again use something sharp to detach the whole front

Now you’ll see this connector that connects lcd to rest of the phone

Behind the lcd.

Rest of what I did, I have no idea why I did it, it just felt right.

I detached everything I could completely, including display

Attached it, and made sure it’s attached

Made sure everything is in its place

Made sure display is in its right place, you can actually see little corners

During this whole time, I completely neglected “left” connector, which is used for keyboard, make sure it’s attached

At this point, you can put back the battery and power it on if you wanna play. Touching screen with your fingers will get it greasy, screen won’t react, touching it with the pencil won’t get screen reacting either. This way you can only damage it, there’s really no reason to do it at all, but still :)

Conclusion

To put your phone back, just reverse the order. Once I put it back, it worked. Phone was working, and so was its touchscreen. That night, I don’t remember dropping it or anything, but I believe I did either hit it or something and that the “blow” detached one of the connectors or something.

Incredible but true, that was the whole magic.

Either way, if you’re touchscreen is not working, and this doesn’t fix it, get new lcd off the ebay for ~36 euros and save your time, money and nerves instead of sending it to customer service. And as I googled, this problem is pretty common with this phone.

Sony Ericsson Idou

Talking about Sony Ericsson, I have “thrown” my sight on Idou,  it should be out by the end of the year. I waited for w960 around 6 months to come out, and until now, nothing managed to just “fascinate” me.

Some of the reasons for “fascination” are: 3.5 inches TFT touchscreen, 16M colors with 360 x 640 px resolution. 12.1 MP, 4000 x 3000 px camera, autofocus, xenon flash, video LED flash with Geo-tagging, face and smile detection. I’ll find out more, soon enough, for now … ’nuff said

More info:
Sony Ericsson W960, gsm arena