Baking N900.in the oven
 

So I made a bold move and baked my N900 in the oven. Got too frustrated with loosing sim and cellular connection constantly. But because I read from some thread that the camera doesn't like the oven I decided to remove it. First by pulling it with fingers, pulling really hard, with no effect. So I checked youtube and noticed there is a tool for removing the camera, tool with four very thin metal slides which goes on each sides of the camera and let's it loose. My version was to stick four kitchen knives (by force) on each side of the camera and bend them all simultaneously. Oh boy I was proud when it came out!

Then I noticed that it came out in pieces and the bottom part was stuck still. So I used the knives and ripped the rest of the camera out with thin metal holder slides bending here and there.

Ok, first task completed. Then it was said that the white plastic plate underneath the keyboard doesn't lke oven either. So I ripped that off.

Then I put the oven to 200 degrees celsius (instructions vary from 140 to 200 celsius with different amounts of time) and waited it to heat. When the oven was ready I took aluminium thin foil and covered a cup with that, placed the bare motherboard of N900 in the oven on top of that cup.and let it stay there for 8 minutes.

In baking instructions for other components it is said that after that 8 minutes shut the oven, open the door and let the motherboard cool down for 60 minutes. I opened the oven and as I am a restless guy let it be in the oven for maybe 10 minutes and took it out and placed on the table. Then another 10 minutes and just had to get to test if it works the motherboard still quite warm.

I really didn't care cause I was skeptic this to work and I had been quite brutal to the motherboard while removing the camera so I was sure that already broke my device. Put all the pieces together and booted without problems. Except my keyboard didn't work anymore. Took the phone in parts again, took the white plastic off and checked really carefully to place it exactly in the right place so that the contacting metal pieces underneath it are in place where you press with the keys. Put it back together, booted and voila - keyboard worked.

Before yesterday evening during writing this long text I would have lost the connection like ten times and probably ended on losing sim connection and had to reboot, first saving this text to documents and then after reboot copying from there to here again and hope that the connection stays when I hit the enter. Had been using my N900 like this for many weeks and it was really annoying. Now it seems though that there are no problems anymore with my sim and cellular except a tiny problem - lacking camera.

Now I think I will ttry to find from internet where to buy that kind of a camera removing tool, try to take camera from another N900 and stick it on this one. It probably wont work cause I made so much damage to the place where you stick it.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

I cut a razer blade to fit in both sides.
I press them down (very gently) with a screwdriver.
So you may not need that special (depending on how many devices you need to fix ;) )

fun fact: the right orientation of the camera module is even marked by a small dot.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

First full day with zero failed connection error.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

Another notice of tye effects of baking: battery life exceeded.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

So baking definitely made your N900 yummier and tastier :)

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

I had to toaster-oven reflow an old CF wifi card for my Sharp Linux Zaurus, it worked about five times.
I should try to use my hot air reflow gun on one of my X-SIM N900s.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

After couple of days I got this lockscreen freeze and lost my sim again. Baked again and reflashed and installed cssu thumb and has been working fine. This time kept 10min in 200 celsius. Gonna report if/when gonna lose sim again. Hopefully never.

And I think it was a mistake to to play that much psycho pinball with the device using keyboard for control and let my kid play as well. With pinball you do not always press the keys with the lightest way. Maybe that is the reason for my device to to start having problems.

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

About pinball: I do not know but pushing hard and frequently may speed it up.
I never played with N900s and was very cautious.

But this is due to a design mistake or bad production (like the USB port or other failures like the N95 slider rails, N97 GPS antenna and and and) as so many devices were affected.

I did never believe in that paper, spring, bakening voodo but just enabled another device.
The same you should do but I understand that it is a real hard task to choose one of the 58s. :D

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

The paper or spring are not voodo. I did it on three devices and i asure it is a solution

Re: Baking N900.in the oven
 

For how long?