[TUTORIAL] Pimp your Desire HD!

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Overloaded

Senior Member
Apr 23, 2009
503
82
Hey guys,

I've seen the chromed Desire HD on the XDA front page and thought it was totally awesome. So i did it with my own phone too, but i wanted something extra, so i've also painted some stuff.

And maybe some more people want to do it but don't know how.. That's the reason i've made this short tutorial :D

And also post your own results in this topic :D

Let's start the pimping:


First up is removing this little sticker and pull out the volume button thingy with some tweezers or a small screwdriver
1.jpg




The next step is removing the GPS antenna. This is the small rubber piece that also holds the plastic glass for the dual LED's.
This is a hard piece to remove and i don't have pictures of this procedure. But i think the best way is to carefully open/push away the 8 plastic pins on the sides of the rubber with a sharp stanley knife. I started at the top and went round the entire think. Slowly it will pop out of the body.



Then you have to remove 5 screws with a small skrewdriver thing. I tried some of mine until one fitted. Don't know witch size it is exactly.
2.jpg




After you've removed the 5 screws you can carefully remove the body from the phone. You have to tilt it a little bit because the light sensor (the most right dot at the side of the speaker grill) is a little bit sunk into the body.
3.jpg




The next step is to remove all the small little pieces from the aluminium piece.
The camera cover has 4 little metal taps that you have to fold a little bit to the inside, then it will fall out of the body.
The other 3 things are easily to remove, their held in place with some double sticky tape stuff.
4.jpg




Now it's time to sand the thing until you've got the result you want. I didn't want to have it really shiny so i stopped when i got a nice brushed look. But if you want to have it shine you just have to keep sanding (up to grid 2500).
I've started with a sandpaper with grid size 200. After all the paint was gone i've wet sanded with 400 and after that 800. These are my results:
5.jpg




When i was sanding i noticed the HTC logo letters were falling out :p
I removed them. After the sanding I've painted them black with a very fluid paint so it will fill up the gap nicely. The excess paint you can easily sand away with grid 800.
6.jpg




In the meantime when the paint had to dry i roughened up the surface of the small pieces and prepared them fore a paint job.
7.jpg





After two layers of standard spray paint (color mat traffic red) i noticed i didn't like the red speaker grill. It was just ugly. So i've sanded the paint off of the piece and painted it black :)
8.jpg




The next step would be to glue the small pieces back on the body. I don't know exactly what glue it was. But it's glue that is pretty fluid and dries up pretty quickly. The English translation would be 'secondglue' :p but i don't know that's the right description ^^


9.jpg


10.jpg




Have fun modding your Desire HD and show me your results :D :cool:


Regards, Bas ;)
 
Last edited:

robinmobile

Senior Member
May 19, 2011
316
44
rotterdam
Mind blowing dude..... But you should upload more pics of the finished work....

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA App
 

rakinisbat

Senior Member
Dec 27, 2009
200
38
Sydney
W0W! This will take my phone to a whole another level, I Will be doing this very very soon, next month,
 

Kevxify

Senior Member
Jul 18, 2011
72
8
so wickedly nice!!!
*drool*
hope i got the guts to do this....

kinda curious how you remove the LEDs?
 

rakinisbat

Senior Member
Dec 27, 2009
200
38
Sydney
How did you paint the small parts. I means what type of paint.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using xda premium
 
Last edited:

Overloaded

Senior Member
Apr 23, 2009
503
82
How did you paint the small parts. I means what type of paint.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using xda premium

Please don't quote the entire first post :p

But i used a normal spray paint can? (don't know how you call it exactly in English)
The color was traffic red :)


And thanks for all the nice replies :cool:
 

Paradoxxx

Senior Member
Aug 14, 2008
5,584
5,959
Krakow
Awesome.

Sent from HydrOG3N MOD DHD.
Technology Evolves, Android Evolves.
HydrOG3N is THE Revolution.
 

a33a

Senior Member
Mar 30, 2009
80
2
Birmingham
WOW! To take it to the neXt level, you should order custom metal battery doors and SIM card covers. haha that would be awesome.
 

Zeus20

Senior Member
Feb 10, 2011
618
263
Burnaby
plus.google.com
Awesome

i want that for my desire hd but to scared to ruin the parts on the inside of the phone. should you cover the inside of the phone with cellophane or ceran wrap so no dust gets in?
 

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  • 55
    Hey guys,

    I've seen the chromed Desire HD on the XDA front page and thought it was totally awesome. So i did it with my own phone too, but i wanted something extra, so i've also painted some stuff.

    And maybe some more people want to do it but don't know how.. That's the reason i've made this short tutorial :D

    And also post your own results in this topic :D

    Let's start the pimping:


    First up is removing this little sticker and pull out the volume button thingy with some tweezers or a small screwdriver
    1.jpg




    The next step is removing the GPS antenna. This is the small rubber piece that also holds the plastic glass for the dual LED's.
    This is a hard piece to remove and i don't have pictures of this procedure. But i think the best way is to carefully open/push away the 8 plastic pins on the sides of the rubber with a sharp stanley knife. I started at the top and went round the entire think. Slowly it will pop out of the body.



    Then you have to remove 5 screws with a small skrewdriver thing. I tried some of mine until one fitted. Don't know witch size it is exactly.
    2.jpg




    After you've removed the 5 screws you can carefully remove the body from the phone. You have to tilt it a little bit because the light sensor (the most right dot at the side of the speaker grill) is a little bit sunk into the body.
    3.jpg




    The next step is to remove all the small little pieces from the aluminium piece.
    The camera cover has 4 little metal taps that you have to fold a little bit to the inside, then it will fall out of the body.
    The other 3 things are easily to remove, their held in place with some double sticky tape stuff.
    4.jpg




    Now it's time to sand the thing until you've got the result you want. I didn't want to have it really shiny so i stopped when i got a nice brushed look. But if you want to have it shine you just have to keep sanding (up to grid 2500).
    I've started with a sandpaper with grid size 200. After all the paint was gone i've wet sanded with 400 and after that 800. These are my results:
    5.jpg




    When i was sanding i noticed the HTC logo letters were falling out :p
    I removed them. After the sanding I've painted them black with a very fluid paint so it will fill up the gap nicely. The excess paint you can easily sand away with grid 800.
    6.jpg




    In the meantime when the paint had to dry i roughened up the surface of the small pieces and prepared them fore a paint job.
    7.jpg





    After two layers of standard spray paint (color mat traffic red) i noticed i didn't like the red speaker grill. It was just ugly. So i've sanded the paint off of the piece and painted it black :)
    8.jpg




    The next step would be to glue the small pieces back on the body. I don't know exactly what glue it was. But it's glue that is pretty fluid and dries up pretty quickly. The English translation would be 'secondglue' :p but i don't know that's the right description ^^


    9.jpg


    10.jpg




    Have fun modding your Desire HD and show me your results :D :cool:


    Regards, Bas ;)
    3
    Hi guys, I finally started modding my DHD, I had a few problems and there are still some elements that need to be redone (paint peeled off) but in overall I think it looks cool :D
    thumbnails

    MORE PICS The back is all matte black (powder paint) and all the elements are sprayed "Ferrari Red" :D Sorry for bad quality pics but I took them with Xperia X10 mini pro. In reality the red really stands out, on pics it look a bit faded.
    2
    wow very nice!!
    but if ill do it, i know ill kill my phone :p
    2
    My pimpin

    here is my work.

    only broken thing is me thumb and my volume down key :laugh:

    i used 400, 320, 200 sandpaper, standart sprey paint and some glue to re-attach buttons to cover shell..

    sanding is the most diffiuclt part of all.
    2
    Google still has em:
    http://goo.gl/k67bQ
    first 4-5 pics.