Dear friends, if you have a broken PinePhone / Pinephone Pro battery connector -
- there are two options that I describe below. These two options are slightly more tricky
than ordering from PINE64, however they are much cheaper and are available worldwide:
(1st of all remove the old connector, this could be done by a soldering iron with a fine tip:
melt through the old connector plastic remains and then remove the pins one-by-one)
1) a male/female pair of JST SH 1.0mm 4-pin connectors:
These connectors are sold for peanuts in 10pcs quantities and look low-profile enough,
perhaps the slimmest out of JST connector family. Therefore you will be able to fit them
into the phone, however you may have to remove a piece of case's plastic to make room
Advantage:
2) a compatible 4-pin battery connector intended for another phone:
They are difficult to find and ensure that they are compatible, since only a few sellers openly
write the mm dimensions of such connectors in addition to what phone they are made for.
inmobile.ir website kindly provides the motherboard photos on top of a graph paper,
letting you to estimate the compatibility without seeing these parts in person, although
unfortunately because of some world events this website seems down at the moment.
However, while this website was still online, I found a few parts that seem suitable:
it should be compatible and even more resilient than the PinePhone's original:
Advantage:
- there are two options that I describe below. These two options are slightly more tricky
than ordering from PINE64, however they are much cheaper and are available worldwide:
(1st of all remove the old connector, this could be done by a soldering iron with a fine tip:
melt through the old connector plastic remains and then remove the pins one-by-one)
1) a male/female pair of JST SH 1.0mm 4-pin connectors:
These connectors are sold for peanuts in 10pcs quantities and look low-profile enough,
perhaps the slimmest out of JST connector family. Therefore you will be able to fit them
into the phone, however you may have to remove a piece of case's plastic to make room
Advantage:
- will be forever available, ensuring that such an approach will work in the future
- need to solder the wires both to a PinePhone motherboard and to a battery
2) a compatible 4-pin battery connector intended for another phone:
They are difficult to find and ensure that they are compatible, since only a few sellers openly
write the mm dimensions of such connectors in addition to what phone they are made for.
inmobile.ir website kindly provides the motherboard photos on top of a graph paper,
letting you to estimate the compatibility without seeing these parts in person, although
unfortunately because of some world events this website seems down at the moment.
However, while this website was still online, I found a few parts that seem suitable:
- Huawei G610
- Huawei G730
- Huawei G700
- Huawei Glory 3C
- Huawei C8815
- Huawei W1
- Huawei G750
- Huawei C8816
it should be compatible and even more resilient than the PinePhone's original:
Advantage:
- no need to do any phone hardware mods like mentioned in 1st post
- are difficult to find and verify compatibility without seeing in person
