help with external antenna port

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ericm115

Senior Member
Aug 8, 2009
72
2
Hello,
So I was being an idiot earlier and started poking around my s4's external antenna port with a patch cable I had to see if I could get some more signal strength with a 12dbi antenna I had. Well I did! I actually picked up LTE signal which I wasn't before. Now when I disconnected it vary careful as I always am with things that have pins I noticed that I have no signal on my phone without the external antenna. Is the port like a switch of some kind that disconnects the internal antenna when the external is plugged in? I tried looking up schematics but didn't find anything. right now the solution I found was sticking a very short 22 gauge solid copper wire into it. The wire is way too short to be picking up signal, it's maybe an inch long so its probably shorting out the connection to the internal antenna. Am I right? is there a way to fix this without breaking the port or shorting the traces?
 

yamaholic

New member
Aug 13, 2014
3
0
Hello,
So I was being an idiot earlier and started poking around my s4's external antenna port with a patch cable I had to see if I could get some more signal strength with a 12dbi antenna I had. Well I did! I actually picked up LTE signal which I wasn't before. Now when I disconnected it vary careful as I always am with things that have pins I noticed that I have no signal on my phone without the external antenna. Is the port like a switch of some kind that disconnects the internal antenna when the external is plugged in? I tried looking up schematics but didn't find anything. right now the solution I found was sticking a very short 22 gauge solid copper wire into it. The wire is way too short to be picking up signal, it's maybe an inch long so its probably shorting out the connection to the internal antenna. Am I right? is there a way to fix this without breaking the port or shorting the traces?

Been doing some research on this myself since I'm using a yagi antenna connected to the R1 port on my S4 Active (which works great BTW) - some people are saying they put a drop of solder in the port to reconnect the internal antenna but no way I'd recommend something like that. Yes the connector has an internal switch that shuts off the regular antenna when plugged in...The connector appears to be an MS-147 - here's some info on it - hirose.co.jp/cataloge_hp/e35801505.pdf - they claim it's good for 12,000 cycles but I'm not taking my chances and try to always be very gentle and don't plug/unplug unless absolutely necessary. I'm curious what it would take to replace the connector since I'm hopeful I won't break mine but with all of the stories like yours I'm seeing it wouldn't hurt to be prepared...I've never had the board out of my phone so not sure but I'd guess it's a very small connection to the pc board not the easiest thing to unsolder-good luck and let us know how it turns out!