Shockingly Scary

Hey everyone! I wanted to share with you all my experience at changing out a charging port on my Galaxy S5 Neo G903M. I happened to accidentally break my cell phone by hooking it up to a power supply that was not a wall charger. After that all it would do is have the charge symbol and if I tried to boot it to the core system it would hang at the Samsung logo. I assumed the charge port was bad so I purchased one for $5 with shipping and installed it myself.

Now I know a lot of you are thinking that this is an older model phone and "why bother". Well this phone version had the dual sim card slots and removable battery. Having a removable battery is very important to me because I can purchase a few of them and have cell power while hiking out on long trips. A cell phone can double as a lightweight movie screen or music player when in a tent far out in the wilderness. Newer cell phones have eliminated the ability for a removable battery (wonder why?).

Tools needed:

Precision tool kit (they sell cell phone kits and these are perfect)

Guitar picks (not needed with full tool kit, mine had a few parts missing so I used picks in their place)

New charging port board

Hair dryer

Procedure

Before starting with disassembly, the battery and any sim cards must be removed first. The tricky thing about taking a cell phone apart is removing the screen that is adhered to the casing. This is where heat comes in. Using a heat gun or a hair dryer to heat up the adhesive, it becomes more pliable and easier to separate the bond. It must be CAREFULLY done and basically accomplished by waving the hair dryer on low around 8 inches from the phone for like 15 seconds at a time. The hair dryer will blow out hotter air than is needed so be careful not to damage the screen. After heating I took the thinnest guitar pick and worked between the screen and plastic casing. I used the thinner pick to wear away at the adhesive and the medium and thick picks to hold the screen away from the case. This took some time and I was careful not to separate the two completely as there is a ribbon cable that attaches the two.

I used a guitar pick to remove the little black plastic piece covering the ribbon connector. I then used the pick to pry up carefully on the connection to remove it and separate the screen from the case.

Once the screen has been separated all the little black screws can be accessed and removed using a precision Philips head screw driver. I chose not to remove the screw holding the charging board in as it is a different size and I didn't want to mix it up. ALL THE REST are the same size so don't worry about mixing them up.

There is one silver screw on the opposite side that needs to be removed as well

There are two tabs that are attached to the charging board that make up the digital buttons. Carefully peel these away from the plastic case.

Once those screws have been removed the two pieces of the case can be separated. Start with the tabs that line around the battery on the inner portion. Be very careful and use a piece of soft plastic to do the prying. By separating these first the rest of the case is a breeze.

Once those tabs have been separated, stick something into the slot above the top black spot and start carefully prying the two pieces apart. I used the screw driver but I don't recommend this. I recommend using something made of soft plastic. Carefully work your way around the phone pulling the two plastic pieces apart.

Now that you have access to the boards, the job is almost complete. I used a guitar pick to remove both antenna wires as well as the ribbon cable from the motherboard.

The last screw must be removed. This screw holds the charging board to the case. I saved this screw till last because it is slightly smaller than the others and I didn't want to get confused where it might have come from (this all happened by shear luck but I am glad I left it till last).

The old charge port board can be removed from the case.

The two antenna wires must be removed and moved to the new board. I used the guitar pic to pry them up and off and used my fingernail to carefully push them onto their connectors on the new board. Make sure you hear all connections click in, or at least feel them click in.

Reattach the two wires and ribbon cable to the motherboard and fit the new board into the case like the old one. Make sure the smaller black wire sits beneath the white one in the little wire holder. Install the one small screw holding the charge board to the case.

Remove both the blue plastic as well as the brown paper covering the adhesive on the board.

Snap the two plastic pieces of case back together and fold over the digital buttons back into their spaces after removing the white paper covering the adhesive.

Reinstall all the screws that came out of the case including the one silver screw on the opposite side. Reconnect the ribbon cable from the screen and install the battery and sim card.

I left the screen not adhered to the case just to make sure what I had done worked. Sadly it did not. I must have shorted the main board because I still get a charge symbol and when trying to boot to the root system it just hangs at the Samsung logo. Had it worked, the last step would have been to attach double sided tape to the areas on the case were the adhesive originally was and stick the screen to the case and viola...job done. I hooked up the phone to a regulated DC power supply to make sure it wasn't the battery.

The steps taken here should be very similar to other Galaxy phones as well as other phones other than Samsung. Take care when doing this yourself and take your time. This post was meant as a guide to help anyone willing to take on the task. I hope you learned something and take the chance of repairing a cell phone yourself. Thank you for following along!

All photos, unless otherwise stated or sourced, were taken by Hive account@csusbgeochem1 and may not be reused without permission. Animations and cover photo created by Hive account@csusbgeochem1 using GIMP.

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