HTC Desire C - Smashing Time

Swings and Smart phones don't seem to mix, my daughter returned home nursing some bruises and a slightly destroyed HTC Desire C.

 

Amazingly if I pressed the power button it still had a good image and the touch screen still worked.

It was not the most ideal touch screen unless your a blind masochist (apologies to any blind masochists who might disagree).

After pulling a couple of glass slivers out my hand I ordered a digitizer screen from Ebay - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LCD-Touch-Screen-Digitizer-Glass-Lens-New-Replacement-for-HTC-Desire-C-A320E-/190992259845?pt=UK_Replacement_Parts_Tools&hash=item2c78069b05

For £7.99 it was worth a shot, worst case it was beyond all hope, best case - it might be salvaged.

Delivery was great, ordered on Sunday Morning and it was delivered Tuesday Morning - nice and speedy.

The kit contained a nicely packaged digitizer with the HTC branding etc on it, a pair of small screw drivers and some case splitters (Spudgers), for they money it was impressive so far.

I had already dismantled the phone to check the main screen and get things ready for the repair, there are plenty of guides on YouTube showing how to do this and I've already got plenty of tools and case splitters for laptop repairs etc.

The kit even comes with a new double sided sticky mask which you can put on the old case and attach the new screen - they thought of everything, the only problem I had was removing the old glue, I found a handy fax cleaning kit I've had lying around for years, this has quite a powerful cleaning solvent, it was perfect to soften the glue enough to remove with cotton buds but not powerful enough to damage the casing.

I also cleaned the front shroud which forms an edge around the touch screen, this is also stuck with double sided tape, sometimes it can be hard to remove so warming with a hair dryer is the trick.

The new screen dropped into position a small amount of double sided tape to hold the data cable flat against the rear of the main screen and it was all in and hooked up in about 20 minutes.

All in all, really impressed with the value for money, it was a fiddly task, mainly due to the time it took to peel the old adhesive off, unfortunately that's a task you need to do well, if you leave a small amount you get a bump in the finished product so knowing that I cleaned and cleaned until I knew I had a perfectly clean case.

The replacement screen fitted so perfectly there are no gaps or problems, it looks every bit as good as the original, I then put some double sided tape on the inside of the shroud and popped that back in place.

A fully repaired phone - including original strip down (about 20-30 minutes), about an hour to clean the damn original glue and crap off and about 20-30 minutes to re-assemble it cost nothing more than time.

Thought it well worth a mention on here, I'll certainly use these again if I need a screen.

 

One repaired phone later (I've put a screen protector on)

Yamaha PSR-S650

I treated myself to a PSR-S650 for my belated 50th Birthday, I got mine from Rocking Rooster music (http://www.rockingrooster.co.uk/) and got a great deal.

I got the S650, a stand, pair of headphones, 5 year warranty and Free next day delivery for £499.

I'm getting to grips with it, every keyboard has different ways to operate it, record it etc and this has a built in 16 track sequencer which is great.
To record it I use an Alesis Stereo to USB cable which has an Analogue to Digital converter in the cable, then I use Audacity to record the final mix onto.

The voices are amazing, guitars, strings, pianos and Organ all amazing, there are almost 700 sounds on it so it will take a while to experiment.

Have a listen, there are a few wrong notes here and there, I've not played in anger for some 20 years, it's been 30 years since I left the club circuit but slowly my fingers are easing up.

I hope you enjoy listening.

My YouTube channel

Wires by Athlete

Jolene - This one's for Matt and Trevor in the Office

Tears in Heaven - using the guitar sounds

Going home - I think I ran out of fingers on this one.

Love on the Rocks - the amazing Sax sounds

Wind Beneath My Wings - the fist song I played and recorded on it.

Samsung SGH-S730M - Thou shall not be rooted - Part 1

As with any steps like this if you choose to try rooting your phone or installing custom Roms etc then this is your own choice and no one but yourself is to blame if it all goes wrong.

I was given one of these phones which is carrier locked to Telus in Canada.

It's not much different to any small Android phone but I was interested if I can 1) Root it and 2) Unlock the Carrier.

I suppose the easiest way to unlock the SIM is just purchase an unlock code but I did find some info on actually editing an XML file to remove carrier lock.

The first issue seems to be root and looking everywhere you then find the usual sites that direct you to pop up city with thousands of pop ups and "this can only be done using a Windows PC " etc.

One program was unlockfree which I installed on my daughters Windows machine (just before I wiped it and rebuilt it), this installed all sorts of junk on the machine as expected and was clearly just a way of infecting the machine with downloaders etc.

I also tried Root_with_Restore_by_Bin4ry which went through the stages but wouldn't root the phone - fortunately with this program I could run it through Linux with my existing adb set up.

Rummaging through adb web site itself I noticed Samsung_Quick_Root but this had possible issues and looked like it needed a Windows program first.

I then stumbled across Poot- http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2204259

You download the APK, I then used ES File Explorer to install this onto the machine, it installs Ministro Library (which appears to be a way of Poot accessing some external files ?).

Anyway, I followed the instructions and rebooted - SU check confirms I have root.

I did install Rom Manager and SU checker earlier and these all said root was not running, now they both say root is OK.

It appears the phone has CWM installed as when I ran Rom Manager it asks me to set up recovery options, the first one says the phones not supported so I chose the 2nd one, I chose the option to say my phone wasn't on the list and it asked me to chose CWM 2.x or 3.x so I picked 3.x. It then refreshed to show the current recovery option is ClockworkMod 5.X.X (right hand image) so I assume this means there is a newer version already installed in the phone ?


         

Poot shows Root access, as does Root checker (Right hand image)

         

 So at the moment I have root access and CWM so I can take a full backup in case I mess things up.

Some key presses that were handy, power down the phone then hold Volume +, Home and Power - the phone will buzz and you see the Samsung name appear, release the keys.

This takes you into a menu where you can factory erase the phone if you need.