Part sourcing, fragile components, discouraged

[futuretiom]

I ordered and received my PinePhone months ago. It seems like forever (Braveheart). The ordeal started when I choose to get a mainboard upgrade for the Convergence abilities.

During the process of swapping it in and out (because I couldn't get it to work and was testing) I tore the cable that is connected from the mainboard to the screen. Lacking the ability to repair that I choose to just order a new screen thinking that would solve my problem.

Well, the screen still lacks several things that are in the old housing including something that is glued down. That led be to tearing yet another small, thing ribbon cable that appears to, amount other things, connect to the speaker.

The screen replacement took over a month to get here (US East Coast). Understandably it's a pandemic and it was the US holiday season. I'm not saying any of this is unreasonable just describing my experience.

So now I'm left in a position where I have a handful of parts, I'm not even sure I can make a whole phone work again (I'll try) and I don't know if I can get the parts I need. Can I just get a replacement pack of all the ribbon cables? It seems like at this point I need multiples of those because they are very fragile.

I am very adept and have taken apart and reassembled MANY phones but I don't do PCB level soldering or anything like that.

This can just serve as an instructive posts to others that may or may not be considering the PinePhone. I would say it is user repairable in only the most basic sense.

Sigh. Any advice?

[Zebulon Walton]

For future reference, the glued-in pieces are much easier to remove without damage if you heat them up a bit with a hair dryer. When replacing my cracked screen the only component I damaged was the vibration motor, which is not a critical part. (I did replace the USB board that includes the motor but the replacement doesn't work either. May have damaged it since the wiring to the vibrator is small and fragile.)