I have an issue with my modem. I don’t know if I did it the wrong way, but the connection for the antenna broke. Actually I just tried carefully to lift the two cables, but I removed the entire connection. Actually it is still working, fixing the cables with tape.
Could anyone give me a hint? Was it manufactured the wrong way? Or did I something wrong? I am hesitating to put in my other modem because I do not want to break that too.
I believe there is another discussion about this kind of outcome, but maybe in the context of replacing the WiFi card. So I suggest a forum search. I think the basic answer is: you were too violent. It is quite difficult to choose the right amount of force and to apply it in the right way.
Wrong, I had the same issue with the exact connector. It’s a cold solder joint, it’s quite aparent to anyone with soldering experience. The replacement procedure for the SparcLan involves re-routing the cables for it and in order to do that you have to remove the frame under the cover, and in order to remove that frame you have to disconnect the cables going to the Broadmobi card. When I removed my cables from mine I had no clue it popped off until I tried to re-seat it after doing the procedure and then noticed that the u.fl connector came off the board. To me this is a factory defect, but was told by support that this is not covered under warranty.
I would suggest you contact support and ask them about it, if more and more of us have this problem it builds a case that these cards were manufactured with this defect. The u.fl does have limited cycles of disconnection/re-connection but I would hope that it should survive at least one cycle which in our cases it didn’t. I was EXTREMELY careful removing mine and it popped off the board and now because they will not replace the card I’m operating on the AUX antenna and will at some point attempt to solder on a new u.fl connector on the board.
The only other option when doing these upgrades is to send in your phone and be without it for as long as that takes to turn around, but to me that defeats the whole idea of a phone that a user can upgrade themselves.
Well, I no soldering experience, so it wasn’t apparent to me.
And I was really careful. I did not want to break it, and I just used my fingernail to lift it carefully.
