Friday, May 1, 2009

Pump up the volume

I've had a Nokia N73 mobile phone for about 15 months now, which means it's getting a bit long in the tooth. I don't know about you, my phones seem to take quite a battering - sometimes literally - and when most phone contracts these days are for 18 months, the last six months prior to an upgrade can be a bit touch and go as to whether the phone will survive. Needless to say, I'm not about to spend an extra £7 a month for a luxury like phone insurance either.

So my N73 started playing up the other day. The rocker switch - which controls the earpiece volume when making a call or the zoom when in camera mode - went worryingly flaccid and refused to function. Rather annoyingly, I managed to turn the volume right down and then couldn't turn it back up again. Doh!

Upon opening the phone up (always have a T6 torx to hand I say) I discovered that the microswitch which controlled it had broken right off the mainboard and my soldering is in no way up to the job of replacing it. I sent it off to have it looked at under Nokia's fairly generous 2-year warranty, but they sent it back unrepaired saying that the warranty doesn't cover "physical damage". What the hell does it cover then?

Anyway, I discovered a way round the problem. Go and find that headset that came in the box with your phone (probably still shrink wrapped and unused...) and plug it in. This has a button on it that allows you to control the volume remotely. Get it back to the level that you want, unplug and your problem's solved.

Doesn't fix the camera zoom, but you'll just have to walk closer to your subject... :o)

1 comment:

  1. There's always a way :-)You'd laugh at some of the things I used to get up to as a mobile hardware engineer, all I'll say is that is IS possible to fix a computer with folded cardboard and an elastic band (well, it was then......)RB

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