[Q] Busted USB port - worth fixing?

My USB port hasn't worked for a few months. It was intermittent at first, but by now it's just dead. I bought a battery charger and a second battery, and just swapped them every night. Works well enough, but it's a PITA.

I've had my i9100g for just shy of 2 years, so it's supposed to still be under warranty (here in Germany, anyway). I sent it to the repair facility but they're giving me grief about running CyanogenMod. Note that the phone won't even charge from fully off -- it's *clearly* a hardware issue, but I don't know if I'll be able to talk them into fixing it. Otherwise, they want over a hundred euro to fix the phone (they insist on a full motherboard replacement), which IMHO is barely worth that new at this point.

If I can't get it fixed under warranty, should I try to get the local repair shop to replace just the USB port, or should I try to replace the whole motherboard myself? (I'm comfortable with disassembling fiddly electronics, but I can't do tiny surface-mount soldering.) Have any of you done either of these things?

Thanks for the quick response. I didn't realize there was a separate daughterboard for the port; that should make things much easier! I think the service center said they'd have to replace the motherboard because that's the "approved solution" for running custom firmware -- what a bunch of assholes, seriously.

I think my plan will be:

* Try to get warranty replacement for the daughterboard
* If not, see what they charge to replace just that daughterboard for me (I already owe them 15 EUR for a "diagnostic" fee, which is waived if they do work, so it's a sunk cost)
* If that's too much, try to replace the board myself


ETA: I'm kind of embarrassed that I missed all the old posts about this apparently very common problem -- maybe I just didn't know what to search for, but it looks like this has happened to *at least* dozens of other users :-/

MistahBungle said:

Or you could save yourself all that grief & just replace the USB board/port regardless. Will cost you a tenner, tops. As TheUnderling said, Keith's thread in General (search for 'replacing usb charger board' or similar as it isn't stickied) has all the info you need to get it done. It really is quick/easy to do yourself.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I'm getting the phone shipped back, FYI.

Anyway, it sounded like a lot of people had issues with getting not *quite* the right board, which tanked their signal / reception quality. If I can clean the plug and everything works, I see no reason to open the thing (other than just to have a look round, which is always fun ).